Tesco Law and Tesco Lawyers: Will our Needs Change if the Market Develops?

Authors

  • Avrom Sherr Univeristy of London - Institute of Advanced Study
  • Simon Thomson Univeristy of London - Institute of Advanced Study

Keywords:

Legal Services Act 2007, Legal Services Market, Alternative Business Structure, Tesco Law, Regulation, Legal Education and Training Review, Barrister, Solicitor, Paralegal, Deprofessionalisation, Mercado de los Servicios Legales, Estructura de Negocio

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine how recent regulatory changes, and the on-going effects of the global economic crisis, have affected legal services in England and Wales, and asks if there are, consequently, “too many lawyers”. The Legal Services Act 2007 introduced new regulatory priorities, placing greater emphasis on competition within a market for legal services, and introducing “Alternative Business Structures”, which enable non-lawyers to own or manage bodies providing legal services, or to carry out reserved legal activities within a licensed body. The paper speculates about the effects of a changing market, illustrated with emerging examples. Whether or not there are too many lawyers depends on who is regarded as a lawyer, what tasks a lawyer should carry out, the structure of the market for legal services, and the needs of legal "consumers".

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar cómo los cambios recientes en la regulación y los efectos continuados de la crisis económica global, han afectado a los servicios legales en Inglaterra y Gales, y cuestiona si, consecuentemente, hay “demasiados abogados”. La ley conocida como “Legal Services Act 2007” introdujo nuevas prioridades reguladoras, otorgando mayor énfasis a la competencia en el mercado de los servicios legales, e introduciendo “Estructuras Alternativas de Negocio”, lo que permitía, sin ser abogado, poseer o gestionar empresas de servicios legales, o desarrollar actividades legales reservadas a un órgano colegiado. El artículo especula sobre los efectos de un mercado cambiante, a través de ejemplos emergentes. Si hay demasiados abogados o no, depende de lo que se entiende como abogado, las tareas que un abogado debería desarrollar, la estructura del mercado de servicios legales, y las necesidades de los “consumidores” legales.

DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2293660

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Views 203
Downloads:
PDF 273


Downloads

Published

27-07-2013

How to Cite

Sherr, A. and Thomson, S. (2013) “Tesco Law and Tesco Lawyers: Will our Needs Change if the Market Develops?”, Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 3(3), pp. 595–610. Available at: https://opo.iisj.net/index.php/osls/article/view/293 (Accessed: 23 December 2024).

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 3 (2013): How many lawyers are too many lawyers: perspectives, context and place

Section

Thematic Articles

License

OSLS strictly respects intellectual property rights and it is our policy that the author retains copyright, and articles are made available under a Creative Commons licence. The Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution No-Derivatives licence is our default licence, further details available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 If this is not acceptable to you, please contact us.

The non-exclusive permission you grant to us includes the rights to disseminate the bibliographic details of the article, including the abstract supplied by you, and to authorise others, including bibliographic databases, indexing and contents alerting services, to copy and communicate these details.

For information on how to share and store your own article at each stage of production from submission to final publication, please read our Self-Archiving and Sharing policy.

The Copyright Notice showing the author and co-authors, and the Creative Commons license will be displayed on the article, and you must agree to this as part of the submission process. Please ensure that all co-authors are properly attributed and that they understand and accept these terms.