Alternative business structures (ABSs) are the vehicles created by the Legal Services Act 2007 to make legal advice more widely accessible than through the traditional solicitors' practice, writes Ian Muirhead.
Research conducted in advance of the Act concluded that 40% of the UK population never seeks legal advice either because they do not think they can afford it or because they are intimidated by the prospect of confronting a lawyer - hence the end of the solicitors' closed shop and the proliferation of new legal regulators. An ABS is defined as a firm that has been licensed by a legal regulator and conducts activities that are reserved exclusively to solicitors and other lawyers, but in which non-lawyers are involved as either owners or managers. The term "reserved activities" is define...
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