This document was prepared by the OECD Secretariat to serve as an issues paper at the 61th meeting of the OECD Working Party No. 2 on Competition and Regulation (13 June 2016). This paper introduces recent disruptive innovations in legal services markets, as well as the overarching trends giving rise to them. The role for…
Making CLE Voluntary and Pro Bono Mandatory: A Law Faculty Test Case
The vast majority of attorneys in the US are required to complete 10 to 15 hours of continuing legal education (“CLE”) every year, an experience well summarized by one attendee’s observation that “[k]nowledge is good, but coerced seat time is wasteful [and] insulting.” The primary rationale for mandatory CLE is to help ensure competent client…
Measuring Legal Service Value
This article proposes a theoretical foundation for measuring legal service value. It aims to support efforts to compare the value of offerings from different law firms, as well as alternative legal service providers. The value of any legal service depends on (i) its effectiveness, (ii) its affordability, (iii) the experience it creates for its clients,…
Understanding consumer experiences of conveyancing legal services
Conveyancing is one of the most common legal services people use in their lifetime, with more than one million homes bought and sold every year in the UK. However, there are some concerns about the conduct of some solicitors and the quality of service they are providing, with high proportions of insurance claims and complaints to the…
The legal needs of small businesses 2013-2017
The Legal Services Board (LSB) has published its third research report focusing on the legal needs of small businesses and looking at how their views have changed – and the legal services market has responded – since similar research was conducted in 2013 and in 2015. It is the largest ever survey of small firms’ interactions with the legal…
IBA Report: Women in Commercial Legal Practice
Executive summary The term ‘feminisation of the legal profession’ is often used to describe changes in the legal profession. This is both a misnomer and misleading. Although women generally outnumber men in law schools, and have done so for a decade or more, men still outnumber women in senior positions in law firms. Indeed, women’s…
Unlocking the benefits of diversity
Research undertaken by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (England and Wales) aims to shed light on what is being done, and what can be done, to improve the representation of female and black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) solicitors in senior roles such as partners or directors. The aim of the research was to understand what…
Prices of Individual Consumer Legal Services 2017: LSB research
The Legal Services Board (England and Wales) has published research which monitors the average prices that consumers pay for a number of common legal services. Understanding changes in prices over time helps determine whether there have been any improvements in the extent of competition between providers, and affordability and access to justice for consumers. It provides…
Alternative Business Structures for Lawyers and Law Firms: A View from the Global Legal Services Market
From a global perspective, the composition of legal practice components is undergoing tumultuous change. The concept of multidisciplinary practice has been embraced in many countries, where lawyers partner with non-lawyers and offer both legal and non-legal services. Less well received are alternative business structures, where lawyers and non-lawyers are permitted to be partners, and outsiders…
The Shifting Frontiers of Law: Access to Justice and Underemployment in the Legal Profession
The article examines two interrelated issues attracting attention from the legal academy, the profession, and policy makers: i) the crisis of access to justice among ordinary Canadians, and ii) the increasing number of qualified and underemployed lawyers. This article sets out to understand the interrelated factors underlying these two trends, and explores long-term, accessible solutions to address the misalignment between the supply of underemployed law graduates and a demand for affordable legal services. In response to these twin problems, we examine how legislative reform,…