Re: Winter 2014/15 | Page 6

Message from the Chief Having a choice Sensible people come straight to Mayo Wynne Baxter when they want legal advice but what are the options for those who, for some strange reason, have not heard of us? What people should be able to do and what they may want to do to access advice are issues that are of concern to all forward-thinking law firms, consumer groups, the Government – and also regulators such as the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA). Not everyone employs a chartered accountant to do their tax return. Some people will do it themselves, appoint a bookkeeper, or look for online solutions, while others will ignore the issue and hope that they are not contacted by HMRC. What makes a person choose to appoint an accountant will be determined by the complexity of their tax affairs, their own level of knowledge and their budget. 6 Similarly, not everyone employs a solicitor to advise them on the law. Like accountants, solicitors are perceived as expensive, perhaps somewhat daunting to approach and likely to deal only with more complex issues. It used to be the case that some of these concerns, particularly around cost, could be alleviated by recourse to legal aid. Ordinary people could justifiably feel that they could get access to justice by appointing a solicitor who was prepared to work for the fees that were allowed under the Legal Aid scheme. However, Legal Aid has all but disappeared for the vast majority of legal work, so the affordability of receiving legal advice, when needed, has become a real issue for all of us. In this context, it is not surprising that there has been increased focus on other ways of obtaining legal advice. In an age where an immeasurable amount of information is available online for the price of a broadband subscription, it is understandably tempting for people to `self-diagnose` by researching issues via Google, perhaps downloading documents and information, then attempting to take issues forward themselves. There is also a large, and possibly growing (the data is not clear) body of legal advice providers that are not solicitors. As at August 2014, there were 10,593 firms of solicitors, employing 130,846 practising solicitors, in England and Wales. The Office for National Statistics in 2012 published data suggesting there were 6,000 non-solicitor legal service providers. Research by the Legal Services Board (LSB) in 2010 estimated the number of individuals providing unreserved (I will explain this term below) legal activities to be more than 130,000 - roughly equivalent to the number of practising solicitors. From a consumer perspective, this looks like good news initially. If you work on the assumption that solicitors are expensive and tend to deal with more complex or higher value matters, you might well feel there is a place for less qualified, and therefore less costly, legal service providers able to meet a need for legal advice that cannot be satisfied by solicitors alone. Some of the services provided by such bodies will be free, in all probability. For example, benefits advice given by volunteers in a Citizens Advice Bureau, or housing advice given by a charity such as Shelter. But what about the advice given on inheritance and tax issues by an unqualified Will-writer, or the advice about employment rights given by an unqualified claims manager? Surprisingly, legal advice across a wide variety of topics can be given, quite legitimately, by someone who is