The Scottish Law Agents’ Society (SLAS) has responded to the report of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), published last month, which recommended that an independent body regulate legal services in Scotland.

But SLAS has cast doubt on its findings and suggests that the CMA has been selective in its use of statistics. It pointed out a litany of errors in the report, among them that the CMA has claimed an increase in complaints between 2009/10 and 2018/19 when in fact there has been a decline, from 1,452, to 1,326.

SLAS also suggests that the Law Society of Scotland should be stripped of its representative function and be made a body confined to regulation, taking on the functions of the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission.

Its response also gives the claims about alternative business structures (ABS) short shrift, saying it is “remarkable that not a shred of evidence is advanced to support the opinion that ABS will in some way benefit the public and allow the profession to flourish”.

Given that the CMA states that “limited empirical information is available on the impact of ABSs in England and Wales”, the SLAS response states: “Perhaps the CMA should devote some of its resources to ingathering such information before deciding whether to recommend imposing this regime on Scotland.”

Andrew Stevenson, of SLAS, told Scottish Legal News: “The CMA is a UK government department, only six years old, and no doubt keen to make its mark. But its recommendations rest upon feeble foundations.

“If implemented, they would cause irreparable damage to the Scottish legal profession in whose long-standing independence and high standards our Society has pride; nobody benefits from that.”