Michael Patchett-Joyce: Legal Services Act could equal City's Big Bang

The Legal Services Act 2007 will herald a revolution in the provision of legal services. Many think the consequences of the Act may be as profound for the legal profession as Big Bang was for the City 20 years ago. Anyone who has read the Legal Services Board's (LSB's) draft business plan cannot help but notice the prominence given to promoting the interests of consumers of legal services. It is right that the profession, and the Bar in particular, should engage in vigorous debate about the different structures that are necessary to provide a wide variety of legal services, whether any of the newly-available structures will suit the provision of legal services by barristers and, if so, the consequences of such alternative structures being adopted.

But while those issues are grabbing the headlines in the professional press, and will attract increasing attention in the months to come, there is another, quieter - and, perhaps, even more important revolution occurring.

A debate over structures is primarily a debate over the form in which legal services are provided; albeit one likely to result in changes to the substance, at least in terms of range of services, provided by those different structures. Yet, without any need for recourse to such structural change, other changes - to the range of legal services being sought by consumers - are afoot.

The last couple of decades has been characterised by what might be termed the accidental death of the generalist. Nobody intended to kill off the legal polymath but, slowly but surely, it happened.

At the same time as the momentum towards specialisation built up, however, other - cross-cutting - influences were also becoming increasingly prominent, notably European Commission law and human rights. At the outset, these cross-cutting influences might not have been fully seen as such because the focus of their application was quite specific.

Demands are being placed on the profession by consumers of legal services. Businesses see compliance with the laws on financial services, pensions, business tax (VAT and corporation tax) and other forms of financial, economic and fiscal regulation as part of a cohesive whole. The fact that the Financial Services and Markets Tribunal, the VAT and Duties Tribunal and the General and Special Commissioners share tribunal accommodation now, and the ongoing steps to create a more unitary Tribunal structure, reflect this perspective. More radically, criminal law and competition law, or tax law and human rights, might have been considered as being well removed one from the other; but no longer.

This does not mean that the generalist will come back from the dead, but it does mean that broader synergies are necessary in order to meet consumer demand. There will be an increasing need to satisfy demands from sophisticated consumers for a palette of expertise drawing on select strands of legal knowledge; what might be termed 'targeted complementarity' in legal representation. Chambers that rise to that consumer challenge will enjoy a competitive advantage.

English law has, for decades, been widely used at an international level. Its clarity and accessibility makes for predictability of outcome. Its reputation means that it is accepted as a neutral legal system by parties with no direct connection to England and Wales; an acceptability that is further maintained and promoted by the high calibre, consistency and incorruptibility of English judges and arbitrators. That significant and longstanding contribution to the pre-eminence of the rule of law will continue undiminished, but new and exciting opportunities for the use and application of English law are opening up (often alongside or, more accurately, in friendly competition with, the laws of other jurisdictions). The courts already established under the auspices of the Dubai International Finance Centre (DIFC), and the civil and commercial court imminently to be opened in Qatar are two examples of new opportunities for English barristers. In the longer term it will be interesting to see what the proposed deregulation of the Indian legal market might hold. The challenge is to respond dynamically to satisfy those newly-created demands for legal services.

Michael Patchett-Joyce is a tenant at Outer Temple Chambers.