Consumer panel

A new trade association, the Society of McKenzie Friends, is to be launched to represent the non-lawyer advisers who charge fees, as the first step towards self-regulation. The news comes as the Legal Services Consumer Panel concludes that the public interest benefits of MFs outweigh the risks.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has conducted a ‘mystery shopping’ exercise to assess consumers’ experience of online self-help tools for a divorce. Meanwhile, work by the panel to open up data held by regulators to be used by legal comparison websites took a major step forward.

The possibility of introducing re-accreditation for QCs, meaning that silk would no longer be a permanent appointment, and a power to strip them of the rank in the event of misconduct, was floated last week.

The Law Society found itself at loggerheads with the Legal Services Consumer Panel last week after the pair placed themselves on opposite sides of the debate over who should run the process of choosing the chairman and board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The major quality marks used in the profession are becoming more credible, but many still have “a long way to go” before consumers can use them with confidence, a new assessment has concluded.

Lawyers need to find new ways to differentiate themselves in an era when their professional titles will start to lose meaning for consumers, according to the chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel.

The Legal Services Board’s consultation on its plan to oblige frontline regulators to have lay chairs has met a barrage of opposition from regulators and lawyers, pitted against consumer advocates, which strongly backed the measure.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has begun an investigation into the emergence of ‘professional’ McKenzie Friends who charge litigants in person for their services, it has emerged.

The Legal Ombudsman compares well with similar schemes on case resolution speeds, client satisfaction and perceptions of fairness, but many complainants reject its findings and its cost per complaint is high, according to a study.

The Legal Services Board’s consumer body has come out strongly in favour of making it compulsory that the chairs of the frontline regulators are not drawn from the profession, saying it would help counter conservatism in liberalising the legal market.

The possibility of clients buying ‘top-up’ cover to fill the gaps in compulsory professional indemnity insurance has been floated by the Legal Services Board as it set the scene for a significant shake-up of current financial protection arrangements.

Solicitors and consumer representatives have come out on opposite sides of the Legal Ombudsman’s proposal to extend its remit to the estimated 130,000 unregulated legal services providers operating in England and Wales.

The Legal Ombudsman is to begin work on what types of complaints it should accept from non-clients amid reports of lawyers harassing third parties over alleged debts, violating their privacy and doling out abusive treatment in court.

The Law Society’s bid to regain powers from the Solicitors Regulation Authority is “quite staggering”, the chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said – and it has stiffened her resolve to oppose any return to self-regulation.

A single regulator for all legal services providers and a single code of conduct is the way forward for the market, the Legal Services Consumer Panel argued today. It essentially recommended tearing up the Legal Services Act 2007 and starting again.