Lord Falconer was recently reported to have said that Alternative Business Structures (ABSs) are likely to lead to pressure on lawyers’ ethics, and that legal education needs to be adapted to cope with it.
Leaving aside the fact that the Act which leads to more ABSs was sponsored by the Ministry of Justice when Charlie F (pictured) was Lord Chancellor, this is a rather uncontroversial position to take. Most lawyers I meet suck through their teeth at the prospect of ABSs. Allow grubby non-lawyers to invest in law firms, or to manage law firms or – somehow worse – provide services which are not legal services to Joe Public (or UK plc) and those firms are, ipso facto, more likely to be unethical.
