Tag Archives: external ownership

Restoring a future for law

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I was privileged earlier this month to be invited to deliver the keynote address at the 2013 Futures Conference organised by the College of Law Practice Management and held at the Chicago-Kent College of Law.  My theme was the future of law.  The speech is available as a video (starting about 15 minutes in and with microphone on at around 16:30 minutes!).  However, I also thought it would be worth writing it up as a paper (which is not a direct transcript).  It’s available here.

In summary, the paper addresses three themes: (1) What is Law for?  (2) What are lawyers for?  (3) The Future.  The first two questions to my mind provide necessary answers to the fundamental question, What next for Law?  For each theme, I suggest a proposition.  The substance of the argument is that both law and lawyers have lost sight of their true purpose and that reconnecting with both is essential to enabling a meaningful and worthwhile future for law.

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ABS two years on: cautiously optimistic

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We are just at the second anniversary of licences being issued for alternative business structures (ABSs).  In the first year, about 40 licences were issued, and progress seemed slow. A year later, there are still only two licensing authorities, but there have been roughly another 200 new licences. The licences we expected for Abbey Protection, AIM-listed Quindell, Knights (backed by James Caan), and BT Law have all emerged.  Conveyancing Direct (connected to Connells estate agency and Skipton Building Society) and Jordans (the publisher) have gained licences, as has DAS Law (Bristol law firm acquired by the legal expenses insurer, itself part of insurance giant Munich Re).

The rate of ABS adoption is hotting up.  Or is it?

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ABS one year on: rushing headlong, slowly

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Here we are, then, one year into alternative business structures (ABSs). For those who were expecting a revolution, the start to ABSs has been, well, muted. But was revolution ever a reasonable expectation? The statutory timetable envisages a licensing process that could take up to nine months. The SRA has also ensured that the timetable doesn’t start to run with the submission of a stage 1 application, so its nine-month timeline hasn’t been reached yet. The question is: does 36 ABS licences (ignoring the multiple licences issued to Irwin Mitchell) in the first year represent a good outcome, slow take-up by the market, or slow processing by the regulators? Has the whole thing – as many opponents of ABS would like us to believe – been a damp squib, an unnecessary and expensive addition to the regulatory terrain?

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