Legal services market study

The CMA carried out a market study into the supply of legal services in England and Wales.

Case timetable

Date Action
12 January 2017 Statutory deadline
15 December 2016 Publication of final report
19 August 2016 Deadline for comments on the interim report
8 July 2016 Publication of interim report
3 February 2016 Deadline for responses to the statement of scope
13 January 2016 Launch of market study

Contact

legal.services@cma.gsi.gov.uk

Government response to findings and recommendations

19 December 2017: The Department’s House of Lords Spokesperson has replied on behalf of the Ministry of Justice to the legal services market study findings and recommendations.

Remedies implementation

Legal services regulators have published their plans to help people shop around more effectively, in response to the CMA’s market study.

Final report

15 December 2016: The CMA has published its final market study report into legal services. It has found that competition in legal services for individual consumers and small businesses is not working well, and has made recommendations in order to address the issues that it has identified.

Responses to interim report

Interim report

8 July 2016: The CMA has published its interim report setting out its initial findings and emerging views on possible remedies. In addition, the CMA has published reports of 2 consumer surveys it commissioned to understand the experiences of individual and small businesses consumers in the legal services sector.

This includes quantitative and qualitative research conducted by IFF Research with individual consumers and qualitative research conducted by Research Works with small businesses.

Responses to statement of scope

24 March 2016: The CMA has published non-confidential versions of the responses submitted by stakeholders to its Statement of Scope document either in full or as part of an anonymised set of summaries. In addition, the CMA has set out an update on case studies in light of comments received.

Responses listed below

Launch of market study

13 January 2016: The CMA has launched a market study into legal services to see if they are working well for consumers and small businesses.

The CMA will examine competition and consumer protection issues within the market study.

Updates to this page

Published 5 February 2016
Last updated 19 December 2017 + show all updates
  1. Link to government response to findings and recommendations added.

  2. Final report published.

  3. Responses to interim report published.

  4. Responses to interim report published.

  5. Responses to interim report published.

  6. Research report technical annex published.

  7. Interim report and research reports published.

  8. Date for publication of the interim report added to timetable (8 July 2016).

  9. Responses to statement of scope published.

  10. Disclosure of interests published.