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A team of senior corporate financiers has joined forces with a law firm management consultancy specialising in alternative business structures to target mid-market law firms, Legal Futures can reveal.

Many of the lawyers who have only just woken up to the prospect of non-lawyer ownership of firms (a sizeable group, I’d wager) generally react with horror. The argument I hear all the time – exemplified by the letter signed by nine general counsel in the US – is that it will dilute the professionalism of lawyers, damage the lawyer-client relationship and lead to dastardly non-lawyers strong-arming lawyers to put profit before ethics.

Our regular round-up of news includes Quindell Portfolio’s latest acquisition, Simmons & Simmons moving City work to Bristol, the SRA’s City adviser joining Obelisk Legal, the Law Society withdrawing its PII broker list, and much more besides.

Organisations whose in-house solicitors provide reserved legal activities to people other than their employer – such as insurers, associations and local authorities – will have to decide for themselves whether by law they need to become alternative business structures, according to the SRA.

Co-operative Legal Services and high street firms John Welch and Stammers, and Lawbridge Solicitors Ltd have today become the first alternative business structures licensed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.