Betfair founder backs new ABS Brilliant Law

What can you say. Now law firms are being run by individuals running gambling lines and cash for car schemes. I note they will be looking to employ 400 people (not solicitors a fairbet!) over 3 years.

Welcome, corporate lawyers to the world that PI lawyers have had to exist in for the last 10 years. Unless you act now to create a cooperative to compete in respect of the marketing you will be handing your business over to quick buck merchants before you can say "we will buy any case.com"

I hope the law society impress on the law colleges to have the decency to cut dramatically the number of places on the LPC courses. Qualification is irrelevant now and to see the amount of debt that the young people are accumulating in their pursuit of training contracts is heartbreaking.

Shame on all who have collaborated in reducing law to this level.

Another fantastically named firm!

When I became a solicitor I joined a profession however this is now being carved up by non-solicitor investors, including claims managers and insurers. I have nothing against innovation and easily accesible services but the legal profession seems to be "going to the dogs".
On the high street solicitors are "jumping into bed with" claims managers to open offices with no real solicitor presence which are clearly designed to circumvent the ban on referral fees. Meanwhile we have people who made their money from betting setting up law firms.
It will end in tears, but by the time it does it will be too late to save our profession.

Anybody who says that Mr Black's investment will create much needed jobs in the legal sector should note that Betfair moved it's opertation to Gibralter in 2011.

You couldn’t make it up!!! Ex Murdock employees, a chap from We Buy Any Car, ex Minster law director and Bet Fair sharing a legal bed! Will the last sane man leaving this sceptic isle, turn out the lights! Only in Leeds United! And a new entry for the Oxford dictionary – Consumer-centric, whatever that might be. But the great British public have become so inherently dumbed down, don't bet against them buying into it!

There is no such thing as a purist lawyer any more. Regulation has seen to that. Too much time ticking boxes and jumping through hoops.

Whilst I am a firm advocate in proper ethical and professional standards, am I going too far in saying that a lot of the time, owner-manager solicitors are no different from any other investor? Each wants to take a cut in the business, to profit and thrive. I just have to look at some of the partners in my current firm.

Personally, would I work for one of these new kids on the block? Probably, so long as my own professional standards and ethics weren't compromised (and they have been historically by senior partners telling me earlier in my career to focus of fee winning and not on quality, which has perhaps made me overly cynical). What I don't see enough of in the legal system are solicitors understanding business, how it operates and delivering a legal standard that means that the required work is completed on time, in the best commercial way, without wasting time thinking about the abstracts of law and doing it for a fair price. We make our own challenges - all the time - not just down to the fact of over-regulation, but because too many lawyers, by their very nature, have egos the size of the national debt and don't think in a business-like, progressive or practical way. Use the law and think. Isn't that what we're taught to do at day one, at the outset, to apply it practically? You wouldn't think so from what I see!

There is no such thing as unfair competition, unless it is shoddy or bad competition.

You cannot be serious.

I'm sure I saw something like this in a Monty Python sketch a few years back.
It was probably very funny then!

As stated above, this will all end in tears.

These merchants don't realise that you can't make a "quick buck" out of the law. They think that immediate untold riches await them and that the legal profession is a fusty old club which needs shaking up. They don't apprecaite that it takes time to build up a reputation and trust.

Sometimes the right advice for the client goes completely against the business's commercial interests.That is how you build trust and get a good reputation for being honest and ethical which is why clients come to you in the first place....

It won't be long before lawyers in such organisations come under tremendous pressure from above to milk the clients for every penny they are worth. We've seen that already with the way that some Will Writers carry on..

I feel sorry for anyone who is seduced by their slick marketing to use them.

I wonder where this will all end. You can't be struck off the Roll if you're not already on it ! - will they be free to close down their companies and immediately restart them again using other lawyers as partners and under another name like unscrupulous traders have done in the past?

The SRA are playing with fire in dealing with these type of people and I'm not convinced that they are up to the job of regulating them properly.

Lots of solicitors have not had either in years. I have found out some Mishes involved in Conning, and two dishonest major Unitary local authorities and their legal departments, dealt with some allegedly Quality solicitors (their fraud was the only thing of quality),and a national multi office firm which has received a FT financial award (for double charging their clients, charging overheads as costs, charging for putting right the errors they made, and -according to a court - carrying out unauthorised work).

So I feel sick when I read this stuff so critical of others. I happen to agree with the criticism. But the legal fraternity and the regulators should have sorted these abuses in their own houses long ago.

At the moment, the solicitor business (not a profession) needs to be able to differentiate itself from the "here today gone tomorrow of business" and the "cheapest service". Ethics was one of those points. For many, it isn't now

It is time the regulators did their fundamental job which is to give the public confidence and punishing and throwing out of the profession those who are dishonest and do the things I have said in my first paragraph. They lack priorities, and concentrate in imposing rules and regulations. When dishonesty is brought to their attention they don't deal with it.

If the regulators can't discipline solicitors or throw them out because bent and dishonest and grossly negligent solicitors have human rights, then what they can do is to cause it to be too expensive for them to practice. That is probably easier to do, with the same ultimate result

The Head of Barclays wants to inspire his staff to engage in ethical banking, and has said that staff that don't buy into this new bank culture are no longer welcome as employees.

Will Madam President now stand up and say that all solicitors have a responsibility to their colleagues and the public, to promote the ethical delivery of legal services, even in the face of the clear conflicts of interest present in ABSs identified previously?

The profession is desperately in need of inspirational leadership, if only to address the concerns of many, that the Law Society has become partisan in its policies.

Dear EJCowper. Cheer up. I would argue that there are still many solicitors motivated by more than just pure greed. Remember your days as a law student and the snail in the bottle of ginger beer-although these days it is more likely to be burgers with equine tendencies

Consumer centric - what precisely does that mean? Answers on a post card.

As part of our "profession", I and undoutedly many others do a significant amount of work for which we don't ultimately get paid in the pursuit of justice for our clients and as part of our professional and moral duty - I wonder how long our new breed of ABS capital investors will tolerate that.

Dear anon,

what you fail to incorporate into your astute mumblings, is that essentially the law, and the legal profession should act as a check and balance on governments who decide to erode access to justice for people like you. No other profession does this, and therefore the sanctity of the law and legal profession should not be sold down the river to betfair!!! Now, go play in the snow!!

Your bigheadedly

tom

I was in business - including life insurance - for 20 years before I became a lawyer.

I can assure you that no matter what senior partners may have told newly-qualifieds about time-recording and billing in recent decades, if business imperatives take over the legal profession, law managers of the future will be talking of customers rather than clients and most solicitors will be on commission-only pay schemes and business managers will be attending seminars on how to outwardly comply with regulation whilst ensuring that its impact is not felt in practice.

I was disgusted by the attitude of some of my employers - paying no more than lip-service to regulation and having a cavalier disregard for the customer's actual needs. It was one of the reasons the legal profession appealed to me - 'lawyers really do act in their clients' best interests'.

Currently, I'm still able to say that is true of my work. But when I look at what seems to be coming down the (sewage) pipe-line for our profession, it's disappointing to say the least.