Chris Kenny (pictured), chief executive of the Legal Services Board, last week vowed to transform the legal services market, promising to promote competition and – as early as mid-2011 – license the first alternative business structures.

Kenny told the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers annual conference that the LSB has been given the green light by government ‘to get on with it’. Its role, he said, is to encourage ‘an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession’, while improving access to justice and ‘supporting the constitutional principle of the rule of law’. He stressed that the interests of consumers are to be at the centre of the LSB’s work.

In the ‘longer term’, he said, the board would review referral fees, accreditation and ‘regulatory gaps’, such as will writing, which is presently not subject to Solicitors Regulation Authority rules.

Responding to a question from the floor, Kenny confirmed that practitioners could ­contact the LSB ‘if they felt wronged by the SRA’.