Its biggest market is in personal injury, conveyancing, will-writing, tax, trading, and employee issues.
The Legal Services Board (LSB) published its study, Mapping unregulated legal services, this week. As well as charting the scale of the sector, it found their services were generally cheaper, with will-writing typically charged on a fixed price basis and flight compensation claims as a percentage success fee.
However, clients of the unregulated sector were more likely to report dissatisfaction, and some case studies uncovered instances of errors in documents and unexpected costs.
Moreover, clients of unregulated providers do not have access to redress through the Legal Ombudsman or to specific regulators such as the Solicitors Regulation Authority or Bar Standards Board.
LSB chief executive Matthew Hill said: ‘We must strike the right balance between increasing access to justice and protecting consumers.
‘We will weigh the findings from the research with a range of other insights and evidence as we consider whether changes to the scope of regulations are warranted in the future.’
However, Law Society president I Stephanie Boyce said: ‘This research confirms the consumer benefits of using regulated providers.
‘Reservation should be considered in a mixture of possible measures for high-risk areas where there is increased evidence of consumer harm, such as will-writing, estate administration, Lasting Powers of Attorney and trusts. With an increasingly aging population, these areas call for regulatory attention to ensure that vulnerable people – particularly those with mental incapacity – are sufficiently protected.
‘We are still concerned about the public’s confusion about the difference between regulated and unregulated providers. Consumers must be made aware of the limited redress available from unregulated providers compared to the substantial redress available from regulated providers.’
