Legal Services Board

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.

There should be a two-tier system of legal regulation that distinguishes between those branches of the profession that hold client money and those that do not, the chairman of the Costs Lawyer Standards Board has argued.

The chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority has responded to strongly-worded criticisms this week from the Legal Services Board by the describing its report as “the best ever” received from the oversight regulator. However, Mr Philip admitted that there were parts of the report and performance review where the SRA had a “different opinion”.

The lack of independence between the legal regulators and representative bodies risks undermining the credibility of regulation and allows the likes of the Law Society and Bar Council to delay reforms that would benefit competition, the Legal Services Board said yesterday.

The Legal Services Board has strongly criticised the Solicitors Regulation Authority over failures in its enforcement work and IT systems – and also warned about the risk that the overhaul of the Handbook “may be too much” for firms and the regulator to cope with. However, the LSB said the legal regulators collectively had all made “substantial progress”.

The flexible benefits scheme that saw Legal Ombudsman staff effectively paid hundreds of thousands of pounds on top of their salaries in the organisation’s first six years – until the government deemed the payments to be irregular – has been scrapped.

The Legal Services Board (LSB) has ditched plans to examine what it could do to enhance consumer protection for those who use unregulated providers, it revealed yesterday. The result of the consultation on its draft business plan also revealed a significant cut in the LSB’s research spend, delivering an extra £150,000 reduction in its overall 2016/17 budget.

The Legal Services Board gives the impression that it values innovation and market development above all things, including “the necessary protective role of regulation” when it goes wrong, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has said.

There is a serious lack of transparency over the pricing of common legal services, major new research has found – with those providers who do publish their rates and also the ones who offer fixed fees generally cheaper than law firms that do not.

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.

The Bar Standards Board has received the green light to license alternative business structures. The approval from the Legal Services Board needs to be confirmed by the Ministry of Justice. The BSB’s initial focus will be on “low-risk, advocacy focused ABSs”.

The Legal Services Board is set to instruct the frontline regulators like the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board to get tough with lawyers who do not handle client complaints properly. Draft guidance published for consultation yesterday said that they could stage “supervisory interventions” into poorly performing firms.

The Legal Services Board has said it expects the cost of regulating lawyers to be “going down, not up” as it approved a minor increase in the cost of practising for barristers. It said barristers should be given “much greater information” about how their money is spent.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) has outlined plans which would enable accountants to carry out all the reserved legal activities, including litigation and rights of audience. The ICAEW said its activities would be “restricted to the area of taxation”.

The Legal Services Board has set out plans allowing it to study in more detail spending by approved regulators, such as the Law Society and Bar Council, before it approves their practising fees. The LSB warned in November of a “potentially high-profile and contentious” dispute with Chancery Lane over the use of fees.