FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, 31 March 2016
Improving accessibility of legal services: lessons from other sectors
Legal services need to be more accessible. Removing the barriers faced by many consumers will enable demand for such services to be met more effectively. In deciding how best to do this, the experience of other sectors is an invaluable tool.
The Legal Services Board (LSB) has today published a report with that evidence to enable the approved regulators to improve consumers' access to services.
The report focuses on three factors (other than affordability) that contribute to unmet legal needs. These are:
- inaccessible language and communications,
- lack of trust, and
- failure to cater for the needs of vulnerable consumers.
The report explores how other sectors tackled these issues and developed guides, logos and customer information which made buying such services less daunting for consumers.
Legal Services Board Chief Executive, Neil Buckley, said:
"We know that a high proportion of consumers with a legal problem do not seek legal advice. Many of the barriers experienced are not unique to legal services.
Our new report brings together a series of examples of how these problems are tackled in other sectors.
The report has been drafted to assist the work of the approved regulators. In drawing attention to ways of tackling these barriers we want to complement and supplement the existing work that regulators are undertaking.
We hope that approved regulators will have regard to the themes in this report and use lessons learned in other sectors in their own existing and planned initiatives."
ENDS
For further information, please contact the LSB's Communications Manager, Vincent McGovern (020 7271 0068).
Notes for editors:
- The report: Lowering barriers to accessing services can be found here.
- The report identifies a number of approaches which could be applicable to legal services, including:
- encouraging clear disclosure of key consumer information by providers
- using consumer research to develop guides for providers on accessible language and communications
- developing simple, plain English guides that explain regulation to consumers
- developing logos and other visual representations for providers to use to denote regulation, and
- embedding the importance of consumer vulnerability within the work of regulators.
- The LSB has committed to tackling the existing high levels of unmet legal need as one of its three main areas of focus in its 2015-18 strategic plan. The LSB pursued a number of projects in 2015/16 which contributed to this strategictheme. This included.
- a project exploring what "affordable" means in the context of legal services and what barriers exist to making legal services more affordable, and
- a project seeking to understand how open data and markets, including intermediaries and choice tools, can be used by consumers to solve problems and make effective choices in the regulated and unregulated legal services market.
- Previous LSB research referenced in this report include:
- BDRC Continental's Legal Services Benchmarking report prepared for the LSB (June 2012),
- Kingston University's legal needs of small businesses report (October 2015)
- Optimisa Research's Consumer use of Legal Services report (April 2013), and
- the Norah Fry Research Centre / University of Bristol report What happens when people with learning disabilities need advice about the law? (July 2013).
- The Legal Services Act 2007 (the Act) created the LSB as a new regulator with responsibility for overseeing the regulation of legal services in England and Wales. The new regulatory regime became active on 1 January 2010.
- The LSB oversees nine approved regulators, which in turn regulate individual legal practitioners. The approved regulators, designated under Part 1 of Schedule 4 of the 2007 Act, are the Law Society, the Bar Council, the Master of the Faculties, the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys, the Association of Costs Lawyers and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
In addition, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants are listed as approved regulators in relation only to reserved probate activities.
- As at 1 April 2015, the legal profession comprised 142,109 solicitors, 326 alternative business structures, 15,237 barristers, 7,848 chartered legal executives and 5,678 other individuals operating in other areas of the legal profession such as conveyancing. The sector is valued at £32 billion per annum (2015) which is up 23% in cash terms since 2012. For more information see here.