Claims management companies and law firms are certain to merge once they can form alternative business structures, conference delegates agreed.

All 180 delegates who responded to a poll said that such mergers will happen after ABSs are allowed from October 2011. Delegates were mainly from CMCs, but included solicitors and others associated with the claims industry.

Simon Allen, a partner and head of personal injury at national firm Russell Jones and Walker, said that the advent of ABSs could trigger massive changes in the claims industry, and that lawyers risk being left behind if they do not fight incoming competitors.

‘There is a bell sounding at the edge of the village warning about the monsters coming over the hill,’ he said.

‘Other people will have a look at our marketplace and try and get some. Any market where people can make a lot of money is very interesting to companies that are very efficient,’ said Allen.

‘We are all in our little bubble in the legal world. Lawyers have always had the luxury of being insular but that will have to end in 2011. Yet ABSs still aren’t really understood by the majority of lawyers.’