Better protection needed for consumers of legal services

a statue of Justice on top of the Old Bailey - An overhaul of how legal services are regulated in England and Wales is needed to better protect consumers and ensure more people can access legal services, according to a new report prepared by Stephen Mayson, Honorary Professor of Law at UCL. The report, shared with the Ministry of Justice, is a supplement to Professor Mayson's major review of legal services regulation published in 2020. In the new report, Professor Mayson (UCL Centre for Ethics & Law) outlines the wide range of consumer harms arising from failures in legal services, how current regulation addresses them, and the reforms that are needed to better protect against them. These harms include those caused by scams, dishonesty, incompetence and different types of poor service, as well as harms caused by an ever-increasing level of "unmet" legal needs which, the report says, is the legal sector's greatest challenge. Current structures of consumer protection exacerbate the problem, the report says, by serving to discourage people from seeking legal services. Key to addressing these harms, the report argues, is: To extend regulation to legal service providers who are currently unregulated, such as providers of will-writing, estate administration, employment and lawtech services. To make consumer dispute resolution mandatory - currently it is not for unregulated legal service providers - so that when consumer harms occur, the burden is not placed on the consumer to pursue remedies through the courts or with the aid of third parties.