After a
long wait, the SRA has approved the first multi-disciplinary alternative
business structure (ABS), with London property company Crabtree Property
Management receiving a licence to establish a fixed-fee property litigation
firm.
Crabtree,
which was established in 1983, currently manages in excess of 17,000 properties
across London and the south of England, including residential properties, retail
units and offices.
James Naylor, who has been the Crabtree's in-house lawyer for two
years, will become head of legal practice and the firm's sole legal adviser,
which is presumably indicative of the fact that the focus will be on servicing
litigation arising from the company’s managed portfolio, rather than soliciting
instructions from other property owners or managers. Running a property management portfolio
involves a reasonably regular incidence of low-level litigation to deal with
tenancy issues and dilapidation disputes etc, and therefore there is a clear logic
for a company which has a significant number of properties under management to
be able to handle the litigation arising from it, avoiding a degree of
duplication of effort and cost.
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