Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System

After the regulatory upheavals which led up to the Legal Services Act 2007 and the creation of the Legal Services Board, lawyers might have been forgiven for thinking that the regulatory playing field might be left untouched for a bit. But no. The Competition and Markets Authority announced in January 2016 that it was going to take a close look at competition in legal services provision by launching what is called a Market Study.

The Press release of the annoucement states:

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will examine long-standing concerns about the affordability of legal services and standards of service. Concerns have also been raised about the complexity of the current regulatory framework.

In light of these concerns, the CMA’s market study plans to examine 3 key issues:

• whether customers can drive effective competition by making informed purchasing decisions
• whether customers are adequately protected from potential harm or can obtain satisfactory redress if legal services go wrong
• how regulation and the regulatory framework impact on competition for the supply of legal services

The announcement also stated: According to recent surveys …  around one in ten users of legal services in England and Wales have said that the overall service and advice provided to them was poor value for money …, [and] amongst small businesses, only 13% said they viewed lawyers as cost-effective and around half agreed that they used legal service providers as a last resort to solve business problems.

The outcomes of a Market Study are very varied, and may range from a finding that all is well and that no further action need be taken, to a full scale investigation into the particular market.

The time line for the present study is that after a very short consultation (ending early Feb 2016) an interim report will be published in July 2016, with a final report at the end of the year.

For further information go to https://www.gov.uk/government/news/legal-services-study-launched-by-cma

This also provides links to some of the reports on which the case for launching the Market Study is based.