Company service business takes ABS route

Legal Clarity, a Birmingham-based business offering drafting and company secretarial services to ‘accountants, solicitors and entrepreneurs’, is one of the latest batch of organisations to win approval as an alternative business structure (ABS).

It said registration, which became effective on 1 November, would allow it to broaden the scope of services offered from company secretarial to full company and commercial legal services.

Legal Clarity was founded in 2007 by James Quinn, formerly a lawyer at Slaughter and May and Eversheds. Quinn told the Gazette that registration as an ABS was a ‘big step up for the firm’, allowing it to offer reserved activities. Part of the equity in Legal Clarity is owned by a non-lawyer, which made it essential to register as an ABS, he said.

IT, Quinn added, is integral to the firm’s business plan, providing the means for it to keep costs down for its clients: ‘We leverage technology in any way we can.’

He went on to say that converting to an ABS would open new doors for his firm, allowing it to ‘compete on a level playing field’ with other law firms. The firm’s financial strategy is to grow organically, backed up by a ‘strong IT programming team’.

He refused to reveal the firm’s turnover.