MULTI-DISCIPLINARY PRACTICES: Should the UK follow the US's lead?

The received wisdom that where the US leads, the UK follows may not be true when it comes to multi-disciplinary partnerships (MDPs).Last week, the ABA voted three to one in favour of maintaining its ban on MDPs.

Not only did it disregard the recommendations of its own MDP commission - which proposed a limited form of MDP - but it also abolished the commission for good measure.Two days later, the Law Society Council received an update from its MDP working party.

Its long-term goal, as approved by Council last year, is that 'solicitors should be allowed to provide any legal service through any medium to anyone, while still providing the necessary safeguards to protect the public interest'.To bring about MDPs in the UK, primary legislation is needed.

However, the working party has identified two 'interim models' that can be done without this.'Legal practice plus' would allow non-solicitors to become minority partners in a solicitors' firm provided they contract with the Law Society that they will submit to the Society's regulatory powers and rules.

Linked partnerships would build on the alliances that currently exist between the likes of Garretts and Arthur Andersen.

The main change would allow them to share fees.The Society is also looking beyond MDPs to what Ed Nally, chairman of the regulation review working party, called the idea of the 'Virgin.com solicitors'.

This would be the next level, with commercial organisations, such as Virgin, owning their law firms.

In international terms, the ABA is far nearer the general thinking on MDPs.

Its hostility has given other opponents confidence to renew their objections, which had previously been faltering; the International Bar Association, for example, moved from opposition to a more neutral position where it called for strict regulation of MDPs - or rather, the lawyers working within them - where they occur.US lawyer and leading management consultant Ward Bower, chairman of the IBA's MDP working party, says that like the Quebec question, MDPs will inevitably return for discussion at the ABA.He sees two options for the ABA: enforce unauthorised practice of law rules more stringently than at present, or allow MDPs.

Given the large number of lawyers already working for the accountants in the US, Mr Bower thinks the latter is the more likely outcome.Paul Venton, chairman of the Law Society's MDPs working party, says MDPs are not just inevitable, they already exist.

This means finding ways of working with them and addressing the issues they raise rather than ignoring the reality.But it is not as simple as saying that US lawyers are standing up to the accountants better than their UK counterparts.

For one thing, unlike UK lawyers, US lawyers still enjoy a broad range of reserved activities which they are keen to protect; for another, the ABA does not make rules - it just recommends model rules that individual states usually take up, but they are not obliged.

This means some states could allow MDPs if they want; indeed Washington, DC already does permit a limited form.More crucially still, US lawyers do not have the Office of Fair Trading - a known supporter of MDPs - breathing down their necks.

Its current investigation of competition within the UK legal and accountancy professions could well be the start of a formal push for MDPs, and even if there is opposition within the profession, there might be little solicitors can do about it.

Neil Rose