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25.07.17

Competition and Markets Authority: 10 things to know

10 things you should know about the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) market study into the provision of legal services.

  1. Overall finding – the legal services market is not working well for individual consumers and small businesses.
  2. Consumers find it hard to make informed choices about legal services providers because of a lack of transparency about price, service and quality.
  3. Some consumers do not obtain legal advice when they would benefit from it because of weak competition.
  4. A package of remedies is recommended to help consumers engage with the legal services market by equipping them with tools to:
    – identify their legal needs; and
    – shop around to secure good value.
  5. The remedies aim to facilitate the development of digital comparison tools to help consumers compare providers of legal services – just like comparison websites widely used by consumers in other markets.
  6. Regulators are recommended to:
    – develop new minimum standards for transparency of information available to consumers before they contact firms;
    – require providers to publish information about price, service, redress and regulatory status.
  7. An action plan to develop and implement the recommendations is on CILEx Regulation’s website.
  8. We will consult on how we develop the CMA recommendations in September 2017.
  9. The recommendations are being overseen by the Remedies Programme Implementation Group – this has met three times this year.
  10. You can find the CMA legal services market study report here.

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