Hair salons offered a cut of solicitors' fees

Marketing at its best.
Taken from the Times.

A FIRM of solicitors is offering hairdressers cash to refer customers who reveal that they have marital problems. But one hairdresser has criticised the idea as unethical and refuses to help.

Steve Hall, who received a letter from Trethowans, in Salisbury, said that he was shocked at being told that he could get £75 a time to refer clients.

The firm has defended its referral scheme, insisting that it does not break any rules or guidelines. It says that several hairdressers are willing to take part.

The £75 fee is payable when the courts grant a decree nisi or upon the agreement of a separation deed.

Mr Hall, who runs Heaven Hair in Salisbury, said: “The letter goes on about how we get to build up a level of trust with our customers, but then asks us to sell it to them.”

Bryn Hughes, marketing director at Trethowans, said: “This is an ethical and legal way of trying to improve the profile of our family law team locally. It’s not widespread. I have heard of other practices using it but not in our geographical area. We can appreciate that it’s not suitable for everybody, but it’s just a different sort of advertising. It’s the same as a mortgage broker.”

Law Society to name new arm ‘Solicitors Regulation Authority’

Taken from LegalWeek:

The Law Society is poised to rename its regulatory arm ‘The Solicitors Regulation Authority’, or the ‘SRA’ for short, Legal Week has learnt, as Chancery Lane gears up for the next stage of its post-Clementi split.

Chancery Lane’s Regulation Board met this week to thrash out the details of the proposals, which include provisions for new marketing material, as well as a fresh logo. The new SRA emblem is likely to feature a circle of red dots.

The Law Society’s 16-member Corporate Governance Board looks set to approve the plans today (21 September).

The rebranding is scheduled to go live in January 2007 when a website will also be launched.

The changes mark the latest stage of an ongoing shake-up at Chancery Lane as it prepares for the introduction of the new regulatory regime that is set out in the Legal Services Bill.

Under the changes, the Law Society will continue to function as a solicitors’ representative body while the new-look SRA will handle regulatory issues, although a new umbrella Legal Services Board will ultimately be responsible for all legal regulation.

Complaints handling will continue to be channelled through the Consumer Complaints Service until an independent complaints handling body is set up as part of the Government’s reforms.

The choice of a new name for the regulation arm follows an extensive review of the society’s branding and profile that was undertaken by external consultants.

The Law Society also drafted in pollsters GfK NOP to conduct market research.

However, one council member told Legal Week: "I hate this money being spent on branding and marketing. It is trivial in comparison to the main issues at hand, the first and most important which is keeping this place running."

The ‘SRA’ moniker will be familiar to many as the acronym for the Strategic Rail Authority, the now-defunct government transport quango. The body was disbanded last year when most of its responsibilities were handed to the Department for Transport.

Legal aid reforms 'would cause collapse of the system by 2010'

This is taken from the Times on the 27th of September

LAWYERS have warned the Government that its plans to shake up the legal aid system will put 800 law firms out of business and threaten the whole scheme.

An independent report commissioned by the Law Society of England and Wales says that the scheme will virtually collapse in three years’ time, leaving the most vulnerable in society without legal help.

The report, published yesterday and conducted by the analysts LECG, examines the economics of the legal aid reforms put forward this year by Lord Carter of Coles. It says that legal aid pay rates, which have been frozen for several years, are expected to take a cut and that the running costs of the £2 billion-a-year scheme have risen by £34 million to £96.4 million since 2000.

Desmond Hudson, the chief executive of the society, said: “That £34 million increase in administration costs would fund 14,866 extra domestic violence cases.” Yet last year, the Legal Services Commission spent £605,000 on stationery, he said. “So if you can’t find a legal aid solicitor when your partner has assaulted you, at least you have the recompense of knowing the civil servants won’t go without their pens.”
Mr Hudson added: “By 2010, don’t find yourself assaulted by a partner; don’t have matrimonial or domestic problems; don’t get in trouble with the police — because it’s very likely that no one will be around to provide support.”
Lord Carter’s reforms envisage a new market-based model with firms on contracts and fixed fees replacing hourly rates. However, based on the figures, says the report, only large firms would survive, and then on the slenderest of profit margins. A firm of forty-seven lawyers, three of them partners, could achieve only a 5 per cent profit, leaving no room for investment or development.
The report accepts that the reforms will mean a radical reorganisation of law firms, but it says that about 63 per cent of all offices may be below the minimum contract size of 200 cases a year — about 1,700 of the total of 2,700 offices. In terms of law firms themselves, this is the same as about 1,300 firms. To meet the target, the report predicts that “a minimum of about 800 of these small firms would need to merge into larger firms”.
Mr Hudson said: “This report shows that the Carter reforms can only succeed if there is more money on the table to make fee levels viable. Without reasonable and fair fee levels, many solicitors will be driven out of legal aid work or out of the law altogether. The most vulnerable people in society will end up paying the price.”

Andrew Holroyd, the vice-president of the Law Society, said that there had been an “alarming reduction” in the number of law firms doing legal aid work. In 2001, some 3,500 offices provided criminal legal aid; in September 2005, the figure was 2,651. Offices providing civil legal aid work fell from 4,301 in March 2004 to 3,632, this March.

Mr Hudson said that most legal aid solicitors had not had a pay rise since 2001. “We have long argued that we need a new legal aid system and that the current system is failing. We believe these proposals can be made to work if legal aid is put on a sustainable footing.”

Seems quite important for solicitors out there. No pay rise since 2001? Pretty rediculous.

Welcome to Solcitors Blog!

Solicitors Blog has opened!
Welcome to anyone who will read this, although most people probably won't read this first post... Haha.
Anyway...welcome!