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The body representing licensed conveyancers has launched a quality assurance scheme uniquely linked to their regulator in a bid to help detect mortgage fraud. The move by the Society of Licensed Conveyancers goes significantly further than the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme.

Legal Futures can reveal that Premier Property Lawyers – one of the largest conveyancing businesses in the country – has today become the first ever alternative business structure as the new regime finally gets underway.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) has hit back at opposition from the Lord Chief Justice and the Law Society to its application to grant rights to conduct advocacy and litigation. The Legal Services Board is currently considering the CLC’s application, and as one of its statutory consultees, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge has expressed his total opposition.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board have begun work on creating an online “virtual community” for consumers known as “Legally Speaking”. The news comes as we can reveal the Legal Services Consumer Panel has escaped the “bonfire of the quangos” – just as the panel’s chairwoman is stepping down.

A single regulator for all legal services is “logical and plausible”, but not inevitable, a report for the Legal Services Board has concluded. Former Ministry of Justice official Nick Smedley argued that the existence of multiple regulators “focused on the differences of individual practitioners” is unlikely to be relevant in a post-alternative business structures market.