Report comment

Please fill in the form to report an unsuitable comment. Please state which comment is of concern and why. It will be sent to our moderator for review.

Comment

@Arthur

Why? Why should a trained, qualified expert who delivers his or her expertise through a non-regulated entity not be entitled to call himself or herself a solicitor?

If, for example, a firm of architects keeps a "tame" solicitor who provides planning advice alongside their core service, how does that cheapen the name?

What about an HR consultancy with an employment solicitor on their team?

What about procurement specialists with their own solicitor to help draft and negotiate the contract (and my goodness wouldn't that be a welcome development from the client side in my experience)?

For what it's worth, my clients are all commercial entities, large and small, and are informed buyers. They are already used to a range of potential options in their legal services spend (in-house, flexible offerings like LoD or Vario, non-regulated offerings like Obelisk (at the big end) and non-practising solicitors who work as freelancers or non-regulated consultants (at the small end). There is absolutely no risk of confusion to a diligent commercial buyer and in weighing the cost/benefit/risk purchasing decision I can bet you dollars to doughnuts that they not care a whit whether some Ombudsman is available to them. They will, however, care whether or not their supplier has PII cover and limits its liability (but they will probably not care much whether that cover is £1mill or £3mill).

I appreciate that I'm looking at this through the prism of commercial services, rather than private client-type work, but these "Looking to the Future" proposals are nothing but good news for clients, and even better news for commercial lawyers who don't want to moulder in a law firm.

Your details

Cancel