FOR Lorna Jack, chief executive of the Law Society of Scotland, the outcome of the Scottish Government’s review into how the legal profession is regulated cannot come quickly enough.

Although no changes are expected until the latter half of 2017 at the earliest, Ms Jack noted that current legislation dating back to 1980 “is not fit for purpose”, with everything from the way law firms manage themselves to how client complaints are handled being affected.

Having lobbied all the major political parties to commit to “doing something about it” ahead of the last Holyrood elections, Ms Jack is now waiting for the Government to start a formal consultation on the matter.

As no firm date has been set for the consultation, which must remain open for three months with a gap of at least two months before any legislation is published, the process is going to take time. Yet time, in the current economic climate, is not something Ms Jack feels the profession has to spare.

“There’s an economic driver for doing this because it’s holding back the profession – this is 20,000 jobs and £1.4 billion of output,” she said.

The failure so far to adopt alternative business structures, something that has been available to firms in England and Wales for the past five years, is one way in which Ms Jack believes the profession has been held back.

Legal-profession speak for firms that have taken external investment and so are not wholly owned by qualified solicitors, so-called ABSs caused controversy when they were first mooted in Scotland because the larger commercial practices wanted the option of being able to use them while smaller high street firms did not.

Despite an agreement being reached in 2010 to allow non-lawyers to take minority stakes in law firms, ABSs still do not exist north of the Border. While Ms Jack noted that the profession has in many respects moved on from the ABS debate, she said the need for all-encompassing legislative change is as pressing as ever.

“There’s more open-mindedness in Scotland now - the kickback is not really there any more,” she said. “I think that people look at the fact that England and Wales have had ABSs for five years and see that the sky hasn’t fallen in.”

However, she noted that instead of firms looking to use different models to take their businesses forward, many have opted for cross-border mergers instead. HBJ Gateley, which has agreed a deal with English firm Addleshaw Goddard, is the latest in a line that has seen Simpson & Marwick become part of Clyde & Co, Biggart Baillie be swallowed up by DWF, and Dundas & Wilson be subsumed into London-headquartered CMS, which itself is on the cusp of merging with fellow City firms Olswang and Nabarro.

While Ms Jack noted that this is a reflection of the fact that “marketplaces don’t wait for people”, she added that such activity has highlighted further “loops of inefficiency” that need to be taken out of the way the profession is regulated.

“Cross-border practice is difficult because firms can’t choose to be regulated by either the Law Society of Scotland or the Solicitors Regulation Authority [in England and Wales] – they have to deal with both,” she said.

“Is there a way to deal with law firms when they expand beyond their own borders? We need to be aware of the way practice is going in the UK and globally.”

Related to this is the rise of roles such as paralegal and legal analyst, which have been professionalised in other countries but not in Scotland because there is no regulatory oversight of them here.

“Do we only want to hold solicitors to account or everyone else [earning fees in a firm] too?,” Ms Jack asked. “Ontario has done that very successfully. They have as many paralegals as solicitors and the paralegals have started to do some court work – that could solve some legal aid issues here.

“Washington State has a group called limited license legal technicians, who are like paralegals. That law society’s regulatory power comes from state courts so they have teeth around that and the technicians can appear in court.”

As regulatory oversight would potentially allow paralegals or legal technicians to provide lower-cost advice than qualified solicitors, the move could make legal services more accessible to a wider cross-section of the public too.