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‘Alternative’ law firm Halebury, a specialist business and sport law firm, has announced plans to formalise that tag and become an alternative business structure after substantially bulking up its team.

The ban on law centres and other not-for-profit organisations charging for advice should be lifted as part of plans to bring them into the alternative business structure regime, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said.

The recent debate on the Bar Standards Board’s (BSB) plans to regulate advocacy-focused business structures – entities – pitted Bar Council old-timers against BSB modernists, and it was the latter who came out on top. The motion was bland enough but it soon became clear that what its proposers actually meant by this was “entities will open the door to solicitors flooding (and eventually taking over) the Bar’s institutions and that by inviting solicitor-advocates into its regulatory ‘tent’, the BSB will weaken the distinctiveness of the barristers’ offering”.

Alternative business structures cannot be viewed as law firms and will not be allowed to operate in France, the body representing the 179 French bar associations has said. They claimed ABSs conflict with lawyers’ independence.

A groundbreaking project that aims to encourage students to think about innovation in the post-alternative business structure world – and help them develop new ideas for delivering legal services – has been launched by Sheffield Hallam University.