City firm Olswang has become one of the first big corporate firms to take advantage of new business structure changes enabled by the Legal Services Act.

The firm has applied to have one of its patent attorneys made a partner in the firm following the promotion of chartered accountant Kevin Munslow, the firm’s chief executive, to the partnership. The moves became possible when regulations allowing the formation of legal disciplinary practices came into force on 31 March.

Munslow said the firm intends to promote more trademark and patent attorneys to the partnership. He added that the firm wants to make some non-fee-earners partners, but ‘significant’ regulatory hurdles would have to be overcome.

One such problem is that Olswang’s German office is a branch of its UK partnership and German law does not permit non-lawyers to become partners in law firms.

However, Munslow said he was confident that the German authorities would change the rules.

‘There’s still a subtle difference between treating someone as a partner, and them actually being a partner,’ Munslow said. ‘If it wasn’t for the German complication, we would be looking at making one of our operations directors a partner right now.’