Regulation of Several Market Failures: The Water Industry in England and Wales.

Legal services have characteristics which may cause markets for them to develop in rather idiosyncratic ways. Many consumers are inexperienced in buying legal services and may have difficulty in anticipating the cost of quality of service they can expect from lawyer. This paper explores the provision of legal services from the standpoint of developments in the economics of information and uncertainty. It argues that asymmetries of information between lawyer and client can help explain matters such as the organizational form of law firms. Changes in the legislative and regulatory environment in which law firms operate have made the market more competitive. Along with volatile property market conditions over the past decade, these changes have had an important influence on the structure of the market for legal services. Some of these trends are reviewed. The paper concludes with some comments on recent developments in the field of legal aid