Legal Services Board

Lawyers acting for mentally ill clients and dementia sufferers have been praised in surveys commissioned by the Legal Services Board on the needs of vulnerable consumers, but some did find it hard to deal with solicitors. The majority of dementia sufferers said their experience of seeing a solicitor had been “extremely positive”.

Accountants are set to enjoy the right to handle litigation, advocacy and legal instruments in taxation work after the Legal Services Board approved an application by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Its recommendation will now go to the Lord Chancellor for approval, despite the opposition of the Lord Chief Justice.

The low level of external investment in law firms since alternative business structures were allowed more than five years ago “may be a symptom of weak competition in the market overall”, a Legal Services Board report has suggested. There are also cultural and management factors, it found.

The Legal Services Board has dismissed concerns about the “negative” impact of its requirement that lawyers tell clients about their complaints procedures before any work has been done. Research found “negative reactions” to the prominence of this information but the board said the problem was how some lawyers have chosen to provide it.

The Legal Services Board is to meet with the deputy president of the Supreme Court, Baroness Hale, after she expressed the senior judiciary’s concern over its statement last year that the regulatory objective of ‘encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession’ was “problematic”.

A former chief executive of Natural England is to take over as interim chairman of the Legal Services Board next week after Sir Michael Pitt’s term comes to an end without the recruitment exercise for his successor having even begun.

The Legal Services Board has said it expects frontline regulators to introduce compulsory “minimum disclosures” by law firms on price and service. The LSB was responding to the Competition and Market Authority market study of legal services.

The Legal Services Board has persuaded all the legal regulators to produce straightforward annual statements on their costs so that practitioners can clearly see how their money is being spent, it has emerged. As a result, the LSB has shut down its cost of regulation project and publish its own statement of costs.

The Legal Services Board is to review the conduct of the Law Society since autumn 2014 to determine whether Chancery Lane interfered with the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s independence, it has emerged. The wide scope of the investigation indicates that the board will dig deep into the society’s internal workings.

There needs to be a “root and branch” review of the complaints process run by the Legal Ombudsman, with the speed with which complaints are resolved a particular concern, according to the prospective chair of the organisation’s governing body.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has warned of “information overload” as legal regulators struggle to come to terms with the demands of the Competition and Markets Authority for transparency on prices and complaints.

The Legal Services Board is to have a new chair after incumbent Sir Michael Pitt took himself out of the running for a second three-year term, Legal Futures can reveal. His predecessor was appointed for a second term without the position being advertised, but this time there will be an open competition.

Both the Legal Services Board and the Solicitors Regulation Authority are putting too much emphasis on promoting competition at the expense of the other regulatory objectives they are meant to uphold, the Law Society has claimed. But the SRA has said its plan to allow practising solicitors to operate from unregulated businesses is “overdue”.

The Lord Chief Justice has outlined his “strong opposition” to a bid to allow accountants to handle tax litigation and advocacy work – and in return come under fire from the body that would regulate them. Lord Thomas described the application by the Institute for Chartered Accountants in England and Wales as “entirely premature”.

The Legal Services Board has stepped up the pressure on the Law Society’s role as the approved regulator of solicitors by announcing a formal investigation into whether the Solicitors Regulation Authority has sufficient independence.