Wednesday, 09 November 2016
Research specification - Prices of legal services 2017 - Fieldwork
The Legal Services Board (LSB) would like to commission research to understand how prices of legal services change over time by updating its 2015-16 Prices of Individual Consumer Legal Services research.
The purpose of this research is to undertake a representative survey that enables robust comparisons with the 2015-16 work to assess levels of change.
Understanding changes in prices over time is one of the key measures of the impacts of regulatory reforms designed to promote competition. Changes in prices of legal services can be an indicator of changes in competition between providers, and affordability and access to justice for consumers. The results of the 2015-16 survey had a high public profile and have shaped the Competition and Markets Authority's interim report for its ongoing legal services market study.
The research specification is available on our research website and we welcome bids for the research.
Please note that we only wish to commission the fieldwork for this study, i.e. no survey design, data analysis or report writing is required.
Questions on the research specification can be sent by email to either Meera Amin or Robert Cross.
Tenders must be submitted by 5pm on Friday 9 December 2016 to Chidinma Alufuo.
Interviews with shortlisted consultants will take place in the week commencing 3 January 2017.
ENDS
Notes for editors:
- The Legal Services Board has been commissioning research into legal services in England and Wales since it was created. Its research can be found here.
- The LSB publishes all its research specifications in order to set out clear project aims and promote transparency. The list of specifications can be found here with the latest specifications shown first.
- 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 2016, the legal profession in England and Wales comprised 145,059 solicitors, 15,288 barristers, 6,848 chartered legal executives and 5,697 other individuals operating in other areas of the legal profession such as conveyancing. The UK legal sector is valued at £32 billion per annum (2015) which is up 23% in cash terms since 2012. For more information see here.