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Alternative business structures (ABSs) will pay less to practise than traditional law firms, under proposals released by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. A consultation on the fees structure for ABSs recommends that they should not have to contribute to the Law Society’s representative activities, as law firms do.

City firms, conveyancers and other sectors of the legal profession could seek their own sector-specific regulation if the Law Society fails to approve the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s application to become an alternative business structures regulator, SRA chairman Charles Plant warned today.

Sole practitioners are set to requisition a special general meeting of the Law Society and a postal vote of all solicitors in a bid to overturn Chancery Lane’s support for alternative business structures (ABSs) and wreck the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s application to become an ABS regulator, Legal Futures can reveal.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority will rebuff any efforts to restrict its ability to regulate alternative business structures (ABSs) that are 100% owned by non-lawyers, its chief executive has said. There are suggestions of a compromise on its ABS licensing application that would mean the SRA not regulating ABSs that are wholly externally owned, at least initially.

My recent blog on whether the Bar Standards Board (BSB) sometimes seems to take too pro-barrister a position for a public interest regulator certainly provoked a response from various people. One barrister saw the fact that the BSB and Bar Council share office space as further evidence of a lack of independence, while it also brought out barristers who simply dislike the BSB generally.