Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System

Following its approval under the new Alternative Business Structure (see archive March 2012) Co-operative Legal Services has just announced a major expansion of its activities, including the employment of 3000 new staff (most of them legally qualified) over the next five years. These will include significant training opportunities for young lawyers.

Building on their current operation in Bristol, the plan is to open 5 additional hubs in different parts of the country, as well as a specialist family law unit to be based in London.

The focus of the company is on issues that impact on ordinary people: buying and selling houses; employment issues; probate and will writing; and personal injury.

Much of the advice and work will be undertaken on-line, using new website formats, though face-to-face services will be offered where appropriate.

The one surprising omission on their present list of activities is housing law – landlords and tenants often need legal advice and assistance in creating and ending tenancies.

For more detail go to http://www.co-operative.coop/legalservices/

One of the first new Bills to be introduced into Parliament, following the Queens Speech, is the Crime and Courts Bill. In relation to judicial appointments it includes measures to:

• Have an independent lay person as chair of the selection panels for both the Lord Chief Justice and President of the UK Supreme Court, rather than a judge
• Increase Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) involvement in the selection and appointment of the judges who are authorised to sit as Deputy High Court Judges
• Provide the Lord Chancellor with an increased and more effective role in appointing the most senior judges – through the use of pre-selection consultation in appointments to the Court of Appeal and Heads of Division and sitting on the selection commission for the appointment of the Lord Chief Justice and President of the UK Supreme Court
• Reduce the role of the Lord Chancellor in the appointment of less senior judges, by transferring his powers for judicial appointments below the High Court and Court of Appeal to the Lord Chief Justice
• Introduce flexible deployment so judges can move between working in the courts and tribunals systems, to help judicial career development. (This was seen as a key step in the report published by the Advisory Panel on Judicial Diversity.)

Obviously these changes will not come into effect until the Bill has become law. Developments will be jept under review here.

Well, after the long wait, the Solicitors Regulatory Authority has finally given the green light to the first three ABS offering legal services. They are listed at http://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/freedom-in-practice/alt-bs/licensed-body-register.page which will be updated as new ABS come on-stream.

Further details about the best known of the three, Co-op Legal Service, is at http://www.co-operative.coop/legalservices/press-releases/Making-Legal-History/. Co-op Legal Services have made a clear statement of how they want to deliver legal services alongside the other professional services they offer, such as banking, pharmacy, and funeralcare. My hunch is that we will see a lot more from them over the coming months.

The other two authorised firms do not yet reveal the extent of their ambitions as ABS. At present they look more like traditional high street practices. LawBridge is a firm based in Sidcup, Kent. Details about them can be found at http://www.lawbridgesolicitors.com/AboutUs.aspx. Their website states that they want to use new technologies to cut down overheads, while continuing to offer a good service to clients. The third company is John Welch and Stammers, a firm of solicitors based in Witney Oxon. They have a website at http://www.johnwelchandstammers.co.uk/default.asp. At present this gives little clue as to how being an ABS will change the way they work.

What is happening in the legal services market? As we enter this period of major change, it may be helpful to have some base data against which future developments may be measured. I have been looking at the webpages of the Legal Education and Training Review.
With their permission I have extracted the following information (together with references to the sources):

• The UK legal services sector employs nearly 350,000 people
• Legal services contribute 1.8% of Britain’s GDP
• Between 2000 and 2010 invisible exports by law firms have tripled in value to £2.9bn
• In 2009/10 there were 117,862 solicitors and 15,270 barristers in practice, together with some 22,000 trainee and practising legal executives in England and Wales
• In 2009/10 women made up 45.9% of solicitors with practising certificates (and about a fifth of the partners at the ‘top 100′ law firms)
• In 2009/10 women constituted 34.4% of the Bar (including 11% of Queen’s Counsel)
• 11.1% of solicitors and 10.1% of barristers in practice are from black and minority ethnic groups
• In 2010 1.7% of firms employed 41.6% of solicitors in private practice
• There were 4,874 new training contracts registered in 2009/10, a decrease of 16% on the previous year.
• In the same year 11,370 full time and 3,140 part-time Legal Practice Course places were available.
• 460 ‘First Six’ pupillages were registered in 2009/10, a decrease of 0.6%; 1,432 students had passed the Bar Professional Training Course in 2008/09
• 13,433 students graduated with Qualifying Law Degrees in the summer of 2009
• Over half (56.6%) of the QLD graduates in 2009 received first or upper second class degrees.
• ILEX has 19,176 members
• 73% of ILEX members are female
• In 2009 there were 29,211 applicants to study for a first degree in law in England and Wales; slightly over two-thirds of these were accepted.

Sources:

Office of National Statistics

Bar Barometer: Trends in the Profile of the Bar, (General Council of the Bar/Bar Standards Board, March 2011)

Institute of Legal Executives

Trends in the Solicitors’ Profession: Annual Statistical Report 2010, (The Law Society, 2010).

Those starting out on the study of law need to reflect on the implications of this information. In particular the gap between the numbers of training contracts and pupillages available and the numbers reaching the stage when they can qualify for a training contract/pupillage.

One of the reasons why I emphasise the ‘holistic’ approach to thinking about Law and the Legal System in my book is that students who want to use their studies in some practical context need to think beyond the traditional professional boundaries of solicitor and barrister.

For further information about the Legal Education and Training Review see http://letr.org.uk/

Unlike the stock market changes some years back, when a revolution in trading practice took place overnight, the potential revolution in the delivery of legal services is taking place at a considerably more gentle pace. But an important step forward was taken on 3 Jan 2012, when the Solicitors Regulation Authority acquired the right to licence new forms of legal practice, envisaged by the Legal Services Act 2007 and the Clementi Report that preceded it.

Press stories have indicated, for example, that there is at least one firm of solicitors contemplating a share flotation to raise the capital it regards as necessary to expand its businesses. The co-op is widely reported to be wanting to add the provision of legal services to its portfolio of service activity (such as banking and funeral directors).

Well the ground is now clear for these necessary permissions to be sought. My expectation is that overall progress will be slow to start with, but that as lawyers begin to see the opportunities offered by new business models, there will be a gradual transformation in the legal services market.

The Ministerial claim that consumers will benefit from a more competitive legal services market will not be realised overnight; but I am sure that in 5 years time, there will be considerable change. Watch this space.