News

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s application to become a licensing body for alternative business structures has been endorsed by the Legal Services Board’s consumer watchdog, but with reservations. The Legal Services Consumer Panel expressed disappointment that some recommendations it made during consultations were not adopted.

The latest Question of Ethics from the Solicitors Regulation Authority looks at whether a solicitor should pass on information in a medical report that their client’s cancer is terminal when the doctor says it should not be disclosed.

This week’s news in brief includes details of London law firm EDC Lord & Co, barristers’ chambers 6 Pump Court and referral agency Contact Law launching an online fixed-fee legal advice scheme, ClickLaw24.com.

Plans to clarify the ethics of outsourcing work to lawyers and non-lawyers, and the circumstances in which outsourcing would be wrong, are to be put to the American Bar Association (ABA). The “initial draft proposals” go further than an initial draft published last year.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards have been forced to change the name of their advocacy quality scheme after they were threatened with legal action.

Partnership law expert Peter Garry outlines the significant problems solicitors are storing up by forming LLPs without a written members’ agreement. He explains that many solicitors practising within LLPs are needlessly exposing themselves to potential litigation and considerable financial loss.

Merger has been on the minds of three-quarters of large law firms during the past year, but inadequate preparation for the negotiations means few are seeing it through, new research into the 200 practices has claimed.

The Bar Standards Board should this month finally approve standard contractual terms for barristers instructed by solicitors, after a decade in the making. It has just to decide whether to make it a rule that a barrister need only accept work under the cab rank rule if offered on the new contractual terms.

The number of solicitors from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland requalifying in England and Wales soared by an amazing 1383% ahead of last September’s changes to the transfer regime for foreign lawyers, Solicitors Regulation Authority figures have revealed.

The Bar Standards Board is to regulate advocacy focused alternative business structures and allow barristers to conduct litigation, its board decided yesterday. However, it has placed significant restrictions on the range of entities it is prepared to regulate.