In addition to wanting to reform employment law, the government also wants to improve the public’s understanding of the legal process by allowing filming inside courts. It is bound to be controversial – do you remember the furore over televising parliament when that was first proposed? In general I tend to be in favour [...]
A Blog about UK Legal Services Deregulation
Category Archives: News
Litigation: What does the Future Hold?
The Ministry of Justice today unveiled radical proposals for reforming litigation in England & Wales which, if implemented, will make it hard for law firms to make money from conducting disputes through the courts. The main proposals are; The small claims limit is to be raised 300% to £15,000 Claims over £15,000 will be [...]
Why Cull the Consumer Panel?
So, the Comprehensive Spending Review is almost upon us and the pips (not to mention other bits of the anatomy) are about to be squeezed tightly. There have been some victims already though following the“Bonfire of the Quangos” . No one was expecting The Legal Services Board’s (LSB) Consumer Panel, headed by would-be scourge of [...]
Is it all about branding for law firms?
I ask this following the research published recently by Jures, a legal research consultancy that found out of 2,000 people polled, only 26% would shop for a legal service on the basis of a brand name. They commissioned a report called “Shopping Around: What consumers want from the new legal services market“, which can be [...]
Will the Coalition Government Abolish ABSs?
The (excellent) Legal Futures website yesterday reported that either abolition or postponement of the introduction of ABSs is to be discussed by the government following the creation of the “Reducing Regulation Committee”, a Cabinet level committee chaired by Vince Cable. It is reported that both ABSs and the new Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) might [...]
Revolting Scots and unattractive solicitors
Rarely a day goes by now without someone somewhere writing about the Legal Services Act or Tesco Law or from providing predictions of impending doom. The end is nigh, or is it? Is it opportunity or is it threat? A good place to look for coverage of all these issues and more is Neil [...]
Tesco Law Surges Ahead
Three things connected with Tesco Law caught my eye last week and we saw some interesting developments in the liberalisation of the legal profession, aka the legal services industry. Firstly, On the 18th November, the Legal Services Board (“LSB”) published its consultation paper“Alternative Business Structures: approaches to licensing” . The LSB will become the regulator of the [...]
Help! I need somebody
Two weeks ago I was speaking at a seminar entitled “Competing in a Changing Environment” 1 on the subject of “Tesco Law” and the implications of Alternative Business Structures on the profession. One of the delegates, a solicitor, asked what our “union” i.e. the Law Society was doing to promote its members’ interests. I demonstrated my [...]
Product vs Service
Completing Tesco Law week here on Jobsworth, I thought I would comment on a very interesting post that I read on the “DirectLawUK” blog a couple fo days ago. The central point of the piece was that solicitors have to recognise the difference between a “product” and a “service”. On this thesis, clients want a product [...]
