News

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has radically reworked its reforms of professional indemnity insurance, delaying the end of common renewal for two years and kicking the question of compulsory cover for financial institutions into the long grass. Solicitors will also be liable to pay up to £30m of claims arising from the ARP during its final year.

Lawyers around the world are watching to see how alternative business structures (ABS) work, giving UK law firms a possible competitive advantage if they can meet “unprecedented” client demand for value, Professor Richard Susskind told the Legal Futures Conference. He also said it was “unimaginable” that investors and entrepreneurs would ignore the opportunities presented by legal market.

QualitySolicitors is preparing to eject a member firm for failing to meet the network’s quality standards, its chief operating officer told the Legal Futures Conference yesterday. Law Society chief executive Des Hudson also questioned QS’s use of the word “quality” in the brand.

The legal regulatory system is “defective” and in time it might be right for a single regulator to replace the eight frontline regulators, the chairman of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Charles Plant, told yesterday’s Legal Futures Conference.

A groundbreaking assessment of the progress in delivering the legal services reforms from a consumer perspective is the centrepiece of the Legal Services Consumer Panel’s plan for the forthcoming year, delegates at today’s Legal Futures Conference will hear. The idea of a “single regulatory badge” will also be floated, along with good practice standards for legal comparison websites

The Advertising Standards Authority has rejected a complaint from a Yorkshire law firm about QualitySolicitors’ launch television advert. Hull-based Williamsons Solicitors challenged whether the advert misleadingly implied that customer feedback was the only criterion for assessing whether law firms were suitable to join the network.

As the interest of law firms in external investment goes up, “the interest of funders seems to be firmly in decline”, a new alternative business structures consultancy has found. A survey of 51 of the top 200 law firms by ABS Advisory Partners found that 12% thought it “very likely” or “likely” that they will seek direct external investment.

Dragon’s Den stars Theo Paphitis and Deborah Meaden are backing a major online initiative to provide small business customers of RBS and NatWest with all the online tools they need to run their operations, including legal services.

National law firm network QualitySolicitors has signed a “game changing” deal with WHSmith to place “Legal Access Points” in hundreds of the high street retailer’s stores following a successful pilot. All QS firms will also soon start opening on Saturdays and introduce a wide range of fixed-fee services.

The battle over whether the Legal Services Board, its consumer panel and the Legal Ombudsman can retain their own websites continues, with the sites not closing at the end of last month as the Ministry of Justice had originally instructed.