The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has decided not to make a market investigation reference under section 131 of the Enterprise Act 2002, following the publication of its legal services market study interim report. The market study encompasses ‘legal services’ in a broad sense, including regulated and unregulated services across a range of different legal areas, such as conveyancing, wills and probate, immigration, family and employment law. The report uses Economic Insight’s estimates on the size of the unregulated will writing and probate market, which are from our study Unregulated legal service providers – Understanding supply-side characteristics for the Legal Services Board (LSB). The CMA found that legal services markets are not functioning as well as they could, especially due to a lack of transparency of price and service making it hard for consumers to compare providers and identify value for money. Moreover, a lack of information about providers and available prices contributes to issues in the market.
Our report for the LSB can be downloaded from the publications section of this website.