ABSs delay warning

The delay in introducing alternative business structures (ABSs) could encourage solicitors to offer legal services without the control of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and to the detriment of consumers, a leading commentator has warned.



Professor Stephen Mayson, director of the Legal Services Policy Institute, said lawyers may be tempted to come off the roll to provide transactional and other non-reserved legal advice.



He said: ‘If solicitors were thinking strategically, they might start splitting their businesses between reserved and non-reserved activities. They’d say very clearly: “We don’t have to be lawyers of any kind to deliver non-reserved activities – let’s come off the roll. Let’s provide non-reserved activities as ordinary businsesspeople.”



‘And suddenly the regulatory control that the SRA has over people because they’re qualified but delivering non-reserved activities disappears. Then where’s the consumer protection?’



Professor Mayson acknowledged that this is already happening, but said the numbers doing it could accelerate because of the delay.



He was speaking at a roundtable discussion organised by The Law Report, an online CPD service offered by national firm Russell Jones & Walker.



The firm’s managing partner, Neil Kinsella, warned that there is already substantial and growing competition from non-traditional providers offering non-reserved work. He called for the regulatory changes allowing ABSs to be put in place ‘sooner rather than later’. They are currently scheduled for 2012.



SRA chairman Peter Williamson added that it is ‘a matter of great disappointment’ that ABSs will not be in place earlier.



Neil Rose