News

The solicitors’ training contract should be abolished and frontline regulators compelled to co-operate on standards of training for reserved activities, a legal think tank argues in a report published this week.

Law firms are “markedly” worse at business development and client management than other professional services practices, research has found. The study also revealed that just 58% of lawyers who should be involved in business development at their firms actually are, far lower than other professionals.

Concerns over a worsening diversity picture at the Bar have prompted the Bar Standards Board to consider making aspects of its guidelines on diversity mandatory. The news came as research published by the Law Society showed that significant obstacles still face women and ethnic minorities in accessing the upper reaches of the solicitors’ profession.

Growing student debt means the length of time would-be lawyers spend studying needs to shrink, the chairman of the Legal Services Board has declared. David Edmonds also floated the idea of adopting the accountants’ training model, in which professional training takes place during full-time employment, while appearing to throw cold water on the idea of aptitude testing for students before they begin postgraduate legal education.

Professor Richard Susskind’s prediction that law firms could find themselves competing with legal publishers moved a step closer to reality today after Thomson Reuters moved into legal process outsourcing by acquiring ambitious provider Pangea3.

The Bar is “out of step” with fellow regulators over its operation of the criminal standard of proof in its disciplinary tribunal, a Bar Standards Board meeting in London was told yesterday, potentially causing problems with the admissibility of regulators’ disciplinary findings in the post-ABS world. Meanwhile, the board also argued about the strength of the disciplinary sanction for failing to meet continuing professional development requirements.

Solicitors in Scotland could be banned from acting for both lender and borrower as the profession looks to hit back at firms being thrown off lender panels, it has emerged.

The study of ethics should become a core element of the law degree, a report commissioned by the Law Society has recommended. The aim should be “to stimulate students to reflect on the nature of legal ethics, to equip students to behave ethically and to enable them to play an active role in the formation of professional ethics”.

The government will push ahead with plans to take client account interest and apply it to the legal aid fund irrespective of the possible impact on clients and solicitors, an equalities impact assessment indicates.

The latest in our series of extracts from Climate Change, a report on the impact of the Legal Services Act published by accountants Baker Tilly, considers what kinds of law firms might float and the impact it could have on the practice and staff