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The Legal Services Board is keen to press ahead with plans to licence the first alternative business structures (ABSs) by 2011. ABSs will allow lawyers and other professionals to work together (in perfect harmony no doubt) in providing legal and other services. The legal profession gets worried about the prospect of the 'Tesco Law' scenario, big firms using their branding and marketing clout to monopolise personal injury and other work. The Co-op has already dipped its toe in the legal services market as it provides will writing and other services to its membership.
The reality of modern life is that people are more likely to be made aware of the need to write a will, for example, by picking up information at their supermarket or increasingly their supermarket website, than they are by calling into their high street solicitor's office. Provided conflicts of interest are regulated against and the quality and independence of advice is not compromised, access to legal services should be improved by the ABS model. Also, the experience of opening the conveyancing market showed that increased competition in legal services does drive down prices, which is always one of the main barriers to access to justice.
What LAG fears though is that ABSs will just become another way of delivering legal services in the profitable areas of law which lend themselves well to a commoditised bulk processing - conveyencing (at least pre-credit crunch) and personal injury being the obvious examples. Poor people, who need legal advice on benefits, housing and other social welfare matters, are not so profitable and providing services to them might not sit so easily with a company’s image. LAG also has a sneaking fear that such businesses might not be so keen on promoting employment and other rights if this would compromise their core business.
Nevertheless ABSs do present an opportunity. It would help access to justice immensely if supermarkets and other businesses with high public recognition could act as a conduit for accessing legal advice for people facing housing, debt and other common legal problems. Perhaps it is time for some creative thinking - in the future could we see a large legal aid firm or Citizens Advice Bureau forming an ABS with Asda to provide social welfare law services paid for by legal aid?