Consumer panel

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has given “qualified support” to plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to rewrite the separate business rule. The panel said the existing rule had “fallen into disrepute”.

There is scope for the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) to offer redress to third parties, as long as the complaints involved could be “clearly and tightly defined”, a report by a LeO working party has found.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel today expressed concerned that “the recent emphasis on deregulation… is being taken too far”, while also praising the innovation seen to date through alternative business structures.

The potential for unbundling legal services to help consumers – and particularly litigants in person – is to be examined in a research project being commissioned by the Legal Services Board and Legal Services Consumer Panel.

The Ministry of Justice has finally published a report it commissioned on litigants in person – more than a year after it was submitted. The report criticised the Legal Services Consumer Panel for calling for greater recognition for paid McKenzie Friends.

Regulated lawyers should be viewed in the future as “a small part of an increasingly diverse ecosystem”, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said in a report being launched at today’s Legal Futures Annual Conference.

The Legal Services Board must “knock heads together” to replace the criminal burden of proof in disciplinary proceedings involving solicitors and barristers with the civil standard, the chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said.

The legal regulators should have full independence, and ‘approved regulator’ role of the Bar Council, Law Society and other professional bodies should be abolished, the chair of the Bar Standards Board argued yesterday.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has called into question the existing minimum indemnity cover limit of £500,000 for barristers and called for more research before the limit was extended to firms regulated by the Bar Standards Board.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has committed to opening up its register of solicitors to comparison websites, while the Legal Ombudsman has today made its decisions available in a downloadable format.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has hit back at criticism by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) that it opposes a minimum indemnity insurance limit of £500,000 for solicitors, while supporting it for accountants.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s proposed indemnity insurance reforms have been attacked from all sides by the legal services consumer panel, the Law Society and the insurance industry itself.

Public awareness of the Legal Ombudsman is continuing to fall, while the number of dissatisfied clients who do not bother to complain is increasing, a survey has found.

Clients are paying law firms fixed fees in almost half of all transactions, while unbundling is becoming a significant feature of the market place, a survey for the Legal Services Consumer Panel has found.

Two comparison websites have become the latest to sign up to the groundbreaking good practice standards pioneered by the Legal Services Consumer Panel.