We can help you claim
compensation following an accident
illness or injury - nationwide
Call: 0800 10 757 95
At the start of the year, the Legal Services Board came into existence, and it's already issued a draft business plan in which it details how it intends to go forth in making the law work for consumers. Naturally, the no win, no fee solicitors here pricked up their ears the moment it came out, and several are, even now, looking closely at the document on their screens.
It's important that we understand this new body; our personal injury lawyers are already under the governorship of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and would be subject to the Legal Complaints Service, and both of those have just come within the power of the new LSB. The same is true of the professional body that unites them, the Law Society.
At first glance, it seems benign - the document talks about maintaining a light touch and not interfering too strongly. We believe we're running an excellent service for people making compensation claims, and already doing so for the benefit of the injured parties who use us, so their intentions to centre legal services on the needs of the consumer is what we're doing under the old regime.
Even their urge to ensure that access to justice for those who fall in the space between entitlement to legal aid and having so much money they can afford legal services is covered for us in the personal injury section by no win, no fee agreements.
So there's a good possibility we won't be facing too much of a change to our day-to-day activity with any immediacy. The Law Society, in fact, says that the new body should only get involved in regulation if the usual regulator does something unreasonable, which makes it sound like there will probably be little immediate change for any of the firms that are, like us, governed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
But the Law Society briefing document does say that this required some serious lobbying to achieve, suggesting that there might have been forces within the Government pushing for a more draconian body to be set up. That certainly seems to be the fear of one group of lawyers in Hampshire, which created a page on their website specifically to ask if this was "yet another example of government control freakery", and if it threatened the democratic nature of the UK.
They leave the question open, which may be a wise course of action for us too - at least until the no win, no fee solicitors here have come to their final decision.
