Legal Services
Lawyers should look to the example of opticians when implementing the new business models, Jack Straw has said.
Just as optician chains provide a more varied and inexpensive range of spectacles, bigger law firms can offer quality legal services at lower cost, he told an audience at London School of Economics last week.
The new business models for law firms would see greater use of paralegals and legal executive lawyers, and fewer corner office firms, he predicted.
Highlighting the fact half of legal aid in the Crown Court is consumed by just one per cent of cases, he called for a “better balance in legal aid” in England and Wales.
Straw, the secretary of state for justice, quoted former US President Jimmy Carter’s words that “we are in danger of becoming ‘over-lawyered and under-represented’”.
He said England and Wales had 400 lawyers to every person. It also has the best funded legal aid system in the world—£38 per head of population, as compared to £31 per head in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and about £10 per head in New Zealand and Canada.
Lawyers and law firms who are dependent on state funding “would be wise to reconsider expectations of earnings”, he warned.
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