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An unfair divide

25 February 2011 / Jon Robins
Issue: 7454 / Categories: Opinion , Legal services , Profession
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Is the ban on law firms hiving off unreserved legal work through associated entities the regulatory breach in the profession’s defences that will enable those new entrants to storm a newly liberalised legal services market?

Part 3: Jon Robins confronts an uncomfortable reality for lawyers

Is the profession’s failure to address the separate business rule “the equivalent of the Maginot line”, ponders Neil Kinsella, the senior executive of one of the largest claimant firms Russell Jones & Walker. Or, to put it another way, is the ban on law firms hiving off unreserved legal work through associated entities the regulatory breach in the profession’s defences that will enable those new entrants to storm a newly liberalised legal services market?

Radical change

This is the third and final article in a series exploring the consequences for a profession going through rapid and radical change where some 80% of its work falls outside the protection of “reserved” legal work (see 160 NLJ 7444, p 1662 & NLJ, 7 January 2011, p 7). Most practitioners

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

DWF—19 appointments

DWF—19 appointments

Belfast team bolstered by three senior hires and 16 further appointments

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Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

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Double hire marks launch of family team in Leeds

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