Which way is the legal services market going, asks Richard Moorhead
The Legal Services Board have produced an interesting report (Market impacts of the legal services act–interim baseline report) seeking to bring together research and data on the market the legal services in England and Wales. It draws on data between 2006/07–2010/11. The report acknowledges that in a lot of the areas that the Board would like to have information, there are gaps. Nevertheless, the research that is pulled together here provides an interesting view of how the legal services market has been developing over the last four years.
Contraction
One of the most interesting elements of the report is the way it has evidenced the contraction in the legal services market. In 2010/2011, residential conveyancing was running at 54% of 2006/2007 levels. The figure for remortgaging was 28%. In broad terms, the market has halved. Demand for probate services fell to 70% of 2006/2007 levels. The level of family proceedings was largely static (although they are unable to say anything about levels of self-representation within those figures). If these have increased,
