Will writing, conveyancing and immigration services should become reserved legal activities, according to a legal think tank.
Reserved legal activities can only be carried out by appropriately authorised persons and currently include rights of audience, conduct of litigation, reserved instrument activities, probate activities, notarial activities, and the administration of oaths.
In a paper published last week, the Legal Services Institute (LSI) proposed that probate be extended to include the administration of estates, and that conveyancing services be added to the property-related reserved instrument, in the Legal Services Act 2007.
It proposed that insolvency practice and claims management services be excluded.
The paper, The Regulation of Legal Services: What Is The Case For Reservation?, argues that authority to practise reserved activities should be conferred by accreditation and not confined to legally qualified practitioners.
LSI director, Stephen Mayson says: “If the reserved activities are anachronistic or lacking an articulated public interest justification—which we believe they currently are—there is a significant risk that the Legal Services Act 2007 will have promoted (and the Legal Services Board will be overseeing) an increasingly irrelevant regulatory infrastructure that does not secure sufficient public benefit or consumer protection.”
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