Market monitor

The number of insolvencies among solicitors’ firms reached a new high last year, Insolvency Service figures have shown, and a funder has warned that ‘loan stacking’ will only make things worse.

Anexo Group, the AIM-listed credit hire and legal services business, announced annual results yesterday ahead of market expectations and declared its intention to keep growing the law firm it owns.

The Co-operative – now the UK’s largest provider of probate – recorded a 37% rise in turnover from legal services in 2018, and a 53% jump in profit. Meanwhile, Ince Gordon Dadds has bought another firm.

New-breed firm Carbon Law Partners has introduced a structure to help senior lawyers realise the economic value of their client base so they can retire, in a way that is not possible in traditional firms.

Gordon Dadds saw its share price rebound for its lowest ever point after announcing an agreement to work with five of the law firms that used to be part of the Ince & Co international network.

Big 4 firm EY has thrust another huge stake into the legal profession’s ground by acquiring Thomson Reuters’ Pangea3 Legal Managed Services business, eight months on from buying Riverview Law.

The new rulebook for solicitors may lead to a “new breed” of multi-disciplinary practices emerging that integrate legal services with a very wide range of services for individuals.

Defendant law firm Plexus Law has secured a £15m investment from a private equity company that specialises in the services sector. Origin Equity has taken a minority shareholding.

The chairman of an online tile retailer has teamed up with a former director of Cheshire-based Forster Dean to launch a personal injury firm, Step Legal, which opened this week.

Unrepresented personal injury claimants under the new whiplash regime will have paid-for access to an “independent view” of their claim, the Ministry of Justice has revealed.

Lawyers in the future will likely be more public-spirited and less focused on personal enrichment, but demand for legal skills will persist whatever the political context, according to one of the world’s premier futurologists.

A new organisation looking to bring together and speak for all those involved in supporting claimants in the civil justice system is formally launching tomorrow, Legal Futures can reveal.

The wholly owned alternative business structure being launched next month by NAHL plc is likely take on around 30,000 claims a year by 2023 and generate about £25m in revenue, it has emerged.

A leading sports law firm has launched an accelerator for high-growth technology companies that offers “a flexible approach to pricing to match the company’s growth curve”.

Brexit will create a “colossal body of law for lawyers to get their teeth into”, the deputy president of the Supreme Court, has predicted in wide-ranging evidence given to peers yesterday with the president.