LDP Restrictions

In due course, possibly as early as 2011, the restrictions on who can own or participate in LDPs, and on the services that they can provide, may disappear. These are generally known as ABSs. The Legal Services Board is planning to enable the licensing of bodies under Part V of the Act that can be externally owned and supply other services as well as legal services. Some LDPs (those that include non-lawyer managers) will have to become ABSs after a transitional period has expired after the start of the licensable body regime. A decision on whether barristers will be permitted to become either managers or employees of ABSs will be addressed by consultation during 2010/11. The BSB is also conscious of the need to resolve the position of those who are employed within those LDPs that will become ABSs in advance of the anticipated start of the ABS regime in October 2011, so that transitional arrangements could, if necessary, be made in good time. Any barrister wishing to become a manager of such an LDP must understand that the BSB has not yet considered whether or not it is in the public interest for barristers to be managers or employees of ABSs that go beyond the current model of LDPs, i.e. those that are partly or wholly externally owned and/or that provide services other than legal services, and that therefore remains an open question at this stage. This, too, will be addressed in the consultation.