Wednesday, 28 March 2012

SRA authorises its first 3 ABS structures


After a period of some frustration over delays, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has approved its first alternative business structures (ABSs), enabled by the Legal Services Act.

The big name amongst the first 3 authorisations is Co-operative Legal Services, which for some time has offered legal services which were not specifically reserved for solicitors (such as employment law and wills).  Under their new ABS structure, they will be permitted to add litigation and probate to their service offering, and plan to launch a full range of consumer legal services, including family law, later this year.

The other two authorised businesses are much smaller -  Lawbridge Solicitors (a Kent based family law practice) and John Welch and Stammers (a small Oxfordshire practice) .  In both cases, the primary motivation for the switch seems to be to enable non-lawyers who are heavily involved in the management of the practices to take an equity interest in the businesses.

The SRA continues to process approximately 60 stage two ABS applications, after initial interest from almost 180 organisations.  It is not clear at this stage how many of the remaining expressions of interest will translate into stage 2 applications.

No comments:

Post a Comment