News

The Bar has launched a last-ditch bid to focus the criminal advocates’ quality assurance scheme on judicial evaluation and steer it away from the alternative assessment centre route favoured by solicitors. Despite lobbying from solicitor groups, the SRA has confirmed its support for the scheme.

The turnover of claims management companies (CMC) soared by 57% to £581m over the past year, despite a ten-fold increase in the number of businesses having their authorisation cancelled, their regulator has reported.

Some lawyers and financial advisers may be exploiting bereaved families by overcharging for probate, over-50s organisation Saga has suggested – pointing consumers to its own, cheaper, legal services arm instead. It says it will charge 1% of the estate, compared to up to 5% by other providers.

Lawyers are overpaid for cases run through the road traffic accident claims portal and should be able to make a living from a far lower level of fee, MPs were told last week. Nick Starling from the Association of British Insurers suggested that if referral fees were banned, the £1,200 solicitors receive for portal cases could be reduced substantially.

The Society of Will Writers has become the second trade body to announce its bid to regulate the profession if required. After the Legal Services Consumer Panel said will-writing should be regulated, the society said a system could be introduced “very quickly and cheaply with the profession bearing the bulk of the cost”.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority will not be able to start regulating alternative business structures on 6 October, Legal Futures can reveal. Further, the question of whether prospective non-lawyer investors in ABSs will have to reveal all convictions, even if they are spent, remains unresolved and could stop the SRA licensing ABSs with external ownership.

The confused system of regulation for legal services risks leaving consumers without protection when things go wrong, especially with unregulated businesses “masquerading as traditional law firms, branded with more legal wigs and gowns than you can shake a quill pen at”, the Legal Ombudsman has warned.

RSA, the UK’s second largest insurer, has today relaunched into the legal indemnity market. Working with independent broker Litigation Protection, RSA will underwrite a wide range of legal indemnity insurance products, including providing delegated authority to law firms on 19 products for residential, agricultural and commercial properties with cover of up to £3m.

Black and minority ethnic solicitors continue to figure in a disproportionate number of regulatory actions, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has admitted. It is occuring across key areas such as interventions, referrals to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and the imposition of practising certificate conditions.

A bid by opposition MPs to increase the amount of time they have to hear evidence and scrutinise the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill failed earlier this week. The committee stage also saw a Conservative MP exploit divisions between the Law Society and Bar Council on whether money can be saved from the legal aid budget by reducing payments to barristers.