Tag Results

The new chair of the Office for Legal Complaints – which oversees the Legal Ombudsman – has outlined his ambition for the service to cover unregulated providers of legal services and those offering legal advice as part of a wider package.

The focus of the Legal Services Board on competition in the legal market looks set to intensify after it appointed the inquiry director at the Competition Commission as its new strategy chief. It is one of several key appointments announced recently.

The Legal Ombudsman should swap the telephone for the internet as the main way it deals with the public and in doing so reflect the market it serves, according to the man likely to become chair of its oversight body, the Office for Legal Complaints.

The press should look to the legal profession for reassurance that statutory underpinning of regulation does not impinge independence, the Chief Legal Ombudsman and the Law Society have said. There are also some important fundamental principles that should be behind any new regime.

The possibility of the Law Society and other representative bodies being cut off from any of the money raised by practising fees has been raised by a Legal Services Board call for an “open debate on the cost of regulation”.