Alternative Business Structures - Bring it on!
March 12th, 2010With Autum 2011 being announced as the start date for Alternative Business Structures, the time has come for Divorce-Online to consider what we want to do as a company to maintain our current strong growth.
We are not a law firm, we are in effect a software and ancillary services provider and not providing reserved activities as defined in The Legal Services Act 2007, yet we look like a legal service.
The question will be what would we achive by becoming an ABS and would all the red tape be worth it, considering we are doing quite well with our existing model?
Well the answer to that question is no if we just carry on doing what we do now, but a definate yes if we decide to expand into providing advice and conduct litigation.
The model of the virtual law firm starts to become attractive with Solicitors and other licenced practioners working either as employees or on a self employed basis under our brand umbrella from their own homes or offices around the country. We alreasy know where our clients will come from as the vast majority of visitors to the Divorce-Online website do not use our uncontested document services and just want information.
Those visitors would be able to be converted into leads for our own mediators, counsellors, lawyers, IFA’s etc so we launch with a ready made brand that does what it says on the tin and thousands of potential new clients for the ABS from day one.
My vision is to have a national family law service that can provide a one stop shop for clients from giving advice to dealing with their pensions and investments and this could only happen under the new rules.
We will become a law firm owned by non lawyers who understand how to run and market a commercial business and will use our ten years of experience as an e commerce operation to build Britain’s most succesful family law firm for generations to come.
Our use of technology and effective administration will mean that our overheads will be low and our fees will be lower than people can find on their own high street without compromising the quality of the service we can give to the consumer.
We have already appointed our Head of Legal Practice and Head of Finance and have been in discussions with the senior management of the LSB and are looking forward to reviewing the proposed licencing regimes from both the SRA and the CLC who have indicated they will apply for licenses to regulate ABS firms.
The board of directors will be primarily succesful business people but with the counterweight of lawyers who will be able to ensure that the commercial aspects of the business do not interfere with the duties we have to the client and to the court.
I am hopeful that the title of ABS will be renamed as we will be the model to follow and not alternative within a very short period of time.
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