Consumer panel

There are “clear benefits” in the Legal Services Consumer Panel remaining part of the Legal Services Board, the panel’s chair has argued. Elisabeth Davies said the status quo allowed the LSB and the approved regulators to “access consumer insight on tap”.

Black and minority ethnic (BME) consumers of legal services are getting a “raw deal” when choosing and using legal services, according to the Legal Services Consumer Panel, after its research showed levels of trust, loyalty and satisfaction lower among BME groups that white British consumers.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel and the Legal Ombudsman are the latest organisations to come out against the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s proposal that practising solicitors be allowed to handle unreserved legal work for the public from unregulated firms.

Family law specialists should be required to work under fixed fees, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has suggested as it ramped up its call for regulatory intervention to improve transparency in the market. It said family law was one area where it advised that regulators “should now consider mandating fixed fees”.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel said last week that it was “not blind to the challenges of increased price transparency”, but insisted that making lawyers publish “average” prices could be the catalyst for making consumers ask more questions about cost.

Nearly half of consumer legal services are provided on a fixed-fee basis, new research has found – but it said consumers are still being hampered by a lack of information to help them choose the right lawyer, leading to “lower levels of satisfaction and trust in legal services”.

The slow pace of change in the legal services market means “regulatory intervention” is needed to force firms to publish their average prices even though it is not a perfect solution, the voice of legal consumers has said. The Legal Services Consumer Panel said this could also counter negative perceptions of lawyers.

Friday’s Competition and Markets Authority report on legal services has reignited the debate over independent regulation, with both the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board welcoming the call for separation from their representative bodies.

Making law firms publish details of complaints and average prices on their websites will significantly improve the legal market for clients, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has argued. Its newly published annual report renews the panel’s push for open data, even though the Legal Services Board recently cast doubt on some of its key recommendations.

Law firms should offer “paralegal services” to cut the cost of advice on family matters, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has suggested. In a report for the Legal Services Board, the panel also called for greater use of unbundling and fixed fees.

Greater prescription of how client-care letters are framed could follow a Legal Services Board report yesterday that said “inaccessible language” used by lawyers prevents consumers from accessing legal services. It said other sectors have developed guides, logos and customer information which made buying services less daunting.

Law firms should be required by their regulators to publish details of complaints and average prices on their websites, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said. The panel also called for the publication of firms’ litigation outcomes and success rates.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced a study of the legal services sector for consumers and small businesses so as to examine “long-standing concerns” about affordability and standards of service. The CMA said concerns had also been raised about the “complexity of the current regulatory framework”.

In a further twist to an already complicated saga, the Legal Ombudsman has decided not to become a certified alternative dispute resolution body for the time being. Certification would double LeO’s deadline for complaints from six to 12 months.

The Legal Services Board has joined solicitors in questioning government plans to introduce additional regulation of criminal advocacy. The Bar Council supported the proposals by the Ministry of Justice.