Legal Services Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 204: 204: Clause 71, page 40, line 38, at end insert— ““( ) A body is not a ““licensable body? if it is regulated under section 9(A) of the Administration of Justice Act 1985.? The noble Lord said: My Lords, the purpose of the amendment is to enable legal disciplinary practices that have a substantial majority of lawyers but which do not have external ownership and provide only the services that an ordinary solicitors’ firm can provide to be regulated under the Law Society’s mainstream regulatory amendments. As the Minister will know well, I have on several occasions referred back to the excellent report bySir David Clementi issued in December 2004. His review of the regulatory framework for legal services in England and Wales favoured a step-by-step approach, to which we have referred in previous debates. He ended up, in the final paragraph of his review—paragraph 104—by saying: "““The proposal of this Review is that attention should focus on the setting up of a new regulatory system for lawyers with the LSB at its centre, and the authorisation of LDPs?." He continued: "““This would represent a major step towards MDPs, if at some subsequent juncture the regulatory authorities consider that sufficient safeguards could be put in place?." That approach won the unanimous support of the Joint Committee, which I had the honour to chair. Legal disciplinary practices, as envisaged by Sir David Clementi, are practices that permit lawyers from different professional bodies to practise together as equals. He concluded in paragraph 1 that, so far as LDPs were concerned, "““non-lawyers should be permitted to be Managers of such practices, subject to the principle that lawyers should be in a majority by number in the management group. The non-lawyers would be there to enhance the services of the law practice, not to provide other services to the public?." The amendments in the group are designed to simplify the operation of legal disciplinary practices. That is the whole purpose behind AmendmentNo. 204. Noble Lords will see that AmendmentsNos. 498, 501 and 505 are grouped with this amendment. Amendment No. 498 inserts the provision that, "““at least three-quarters of the partners are authorised persons or are registered foreign lawyers?." That is similar in terms to Amendments Nos. 501 and 505. Therefore, we very much follow Sir David Clementi’s views. The amendments do not refer to multidisciplinary practices or to firms that have external ownership. We are just dealing with the idea that there could be a legal disciplinary practice. In fact, the Law Society has supported legal disciplinary practice for many years. It is known in its terminology as ““legal practice plus?. It is a means of ensuring that those who play a significant part in the running of a legal practice—for instance, a finance director—can be recognised with the status of a partner even if they are not a qualified lawyer. Noble Lords will be aware of my registration of interest, in that I am a partner in the national commercial law firm of Beachcroft LLP, and next year I will have been a partner in that firm for40 years.