ContractStore Legal Business Blog

The hourly rates of law firms in the UK have increased by 89% nationally over the past four years, according to a speaker at the Sweet & Maxwell Forum for General Counsel held last week in London. The conference discussed ways of controlling the cost of external legal support.  One of the speakers, Richard Susskind, a leading proponent of online legal services and author of The Future of Law and The Future of Law Revisited, told the conference that lawyers should move towards alternative models such as ‘commoditising services and multi-sourcing from alternative providers, including online.’

ContractStore’s most expensive English language contracts cost less than the time spent over a cup of coffee with a partner in a City law firm. And our links with smaller, specialist and innovative providers of legal services enable us to advise our customers on how to get the right legal advice at an affordable  price. 

So, if General Counsel want some savings on their legal bills, they can come to ContractStore for advice.

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HM Customs & Revenue may have lost a few CD’s recently but they remain committed to modern technology: they have launched a podcast for people who are setting up their own business or becoming self-employed for the first time. Packed full of useful information, the podcast gives a step-by-step guide to the listener, helping them to get things right from the beginning.

The podcasts can be downloaded from HMRC’s podcast page on its website at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/podcasts

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If your business is registered for VAT, new VAT invoicing rules have recently been introduced. From 1 October companies who are VAT registered should have consecutively numbered sales invoices. Up to now, they have only had to have an identifying number. Other new rules include the need for VAT invoices relating to exempt supplies. I understand that HMRC are giving everyone 12 months to comply so if your numbers are randomly chosen, you won’t be put in jail just yet.

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We normally deal with commercial issues on this website, but given the current debate on the Government’s plan to extend the 28 days for which a person can be held by the police without being charged,   I had a look this week at one of the most important works on our legal system - Dicey’s Law of the Constitution.  My copy is the one I used as an undergraduate not so many years ago, and here are some quotes:

“Suppose, for example, that a body of foreign anarchists come to England and are thought by the police on strong grounds of suspicion to be engaged in a plot, say for blowing up the Houses of Parliament.  Suppose also that the conspiracy does not admit of absolute proof.  An English Minister, if he is not prepared to put the conspirators on their trial, has no means of arresting them, or of expelling them from the country.”

And earlier in the same chapter, on The Right to Personal Freedom, Dicey summarises this as meaning “in substance a person’s right not to be subjected to imprisonment, arrest, or other physical coercion in any manner that does not admit of legal justification.  That anybody in England should suffer physical restraint is in England prima facie illegal and can be justified (speaking in very general terms) on two grounds only, that is to say, either because the person suffering restraint is accused of some offence and must be brought before the courts to stand trial, or because he has been duly convicted of some offence and must suffer punishment for it.”

Members of Parliament, please note.

While on the subject, one suggestion this week, from the Home Secretary, was that the current 28 days might be supplemented by the use of the Civil Contingencies Act, the law passed in 2004 which allows a state of emergency to be declared. 

To use this law for such a purpose would be a misuse - just as the Health & Safety law was misused recently to prosecute the Metropolitan Police for putting seven bullets into the head of an innocent man.

Professor Dicey must be turning in his grave.

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Last week the Legal Services Act became law. This introduces some fundamental changes to the regulation of lawyers as well as changing the legal profession itself, by allowing non-lawyers to become members of law firms. This aspect of the legislation was dubbed ‘Tesco Law’ when the Bill was going through Parliament and the new “Alternative Business Structures”, as they are called, will see new ways of legal services being delivered and, in time perhaps, law firms floating on the Stock Exchange.

At ContractStore we have been ahead of the game for some time: ContractStore was launched a couple of years before the Legal Services Act was even drafted and our wide range of commercial contracts has allowed our customers to obtain quality documents without the costs normally associated with the legal profession, a particular benefit for SME’s. With the new law in place we expect our tailored services will see more activity. And we are already associated with other innovative professionals, vLegal among others, with whom we will continue to offer cost effective and responsive legal solutions for business while always maintaining high standards.

Key elements of the new law include:

A new Legal Services Board (LSB) to act as an independent and publicly accountable regulator with the power to enforce high standards in the legal sector, replacing the maze of regulators with overlapping powers. The chair of the Board will be a non-lawyer.

A single and fully independent Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) to remove complaints handling from the legal professions and ensure consumer confidence.

Alternative Business Structures (ABS) that will enable consumers to obtain services from one business entity that brings together lawyers and non-lawyers, (in theory) increasing competitiveness and improving services. The Act will also allow legal services firms to have up to 25 per non-lawyer partners in the near future, before the full ABS regulatory structure is implemented, and will allow different kinds of lawyers to form firms together in the near future.

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A .co.uk domain name was sold this week for a record price: recycle.co.uk went for £150,000 - so there must be money in being green!

It was bought by ASAP Ventures, who will use the name to launch a company providing information on recycling.

Other high priced sales include mobile.co.uk , recently bought for £120,000 and the £110,000 paid ten years ago ago when Sainsburys bought taste.co.uk.

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The Government confirmed yesterday, 7th November, that implementation of parts of the new Companies Act will be delayed for a year - until October 2009. It was feared that companies might incur “unnecessary risks or costs”, so they decided to delay implementation. Reaction from the business community has centred on the higher administrative costs consequent upon the delay.

Next October should be seeing the introduction of new, simplified constitutions for limited companies but this will now only take effect in 2009, 3 years after the Act was passed.

Also postponed is the new rule that the home address of directors of a company will no longer have to be on the public record. This was included in the 2006 Companies Act largely to protect directors of those companies who have had their homes targeted by animal rights activists. On a more mundane level, home addresses can be used by those who want to return unsolicited junk mail: it can be more effective than sending it back to the company’s head office!

The new law is the biggest single act ever passed by Parliament and has wide-ranging implications for companies, shareholders and investors. See our earlier posting for more information.

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