Estimated read time: 15 minutes
- A New Model Law Firm is an SRA-regulated firm that allows experienced solicitors to work as self-employed consultants, providing compliance, insurance, and back-office infrastructure. At the same time, the lawyer retains the majority of their fees and full control over their practice.
- The model was made possible by the Legal Services Act 2007, which allowed non-lawyers to own and invest in law firms, and has grown from a niche experiment into a mainstream career path now described as “a fundamental part of the UK legal fabric.”
- Platform firms are growing their headcount significantly faster than traditional competitors; in 2024, four of the top ten hiring firms across the entire UK legal sector were platform firms.
- Nexa Law was founded in 2016, received SRA approval the same year, and has since grown to a 300-strong team including over nearly 200 lawyers, with offices in Oswestry, London, and Birmingham.
- To join Nexa, you typically need at least 8 years’ post-qualification experience, a client following or the ability to build one, and the professional confidence to run your own practice within a supported framework.
A Brief History of the English Legal Profession
English law firms have looked roughly the same since the Victorian era. Partners at the top. Salaried solicitors beneath them. Clients channelled through the institution. The firm owned the relationship, the letterhead, and the profit. The individual lawyer received a salary and the understanding that, if they worked hard enough for long enough, they might one day become a partner.
This structure survived two world wars, the invention of the telephone, the personal computer, and the internet. It survived because it worked, or at least because it worked well enough for the people who controlled it. The economics were elegant in their simplicity: a solicitor generated fees worth roughly three times their salary, and the difference was absorbed by overheads and partner profits. The solicitor’s reward was stability. The firm’s reward was leverage.
The cracks appeared slowly. By the early 2000s, a few people had started asking an uncomfortable question: what if a senior lawyer does not need a firm at all? What if the firm is mostly overhead, and the value lies entirely with the individual lawyers?
Parliament passed the Legal Services Act in 2007. The legislation allowed non-lawyers to own and invest in law firms for the first time. The Act created Alternative Business Structures (ABSs), enabling new kinds of legal businesses that could combine legal expertise with outside capital, technology, and management. The first ABS licence was granted by the SRA in 2012.
By the time Nexa Law was incorporated in 2016, the concept had a name, the New Model Law Firm, and a growing body of evidence that the structure worked.
What happened next was acceleration. The pandemic forced every law firm in England and Wales to become, temporarily, a virtual firm. Lawyers discovered that they could advise clients, manage files, and close transactions from a spare bedroom just as competently as from a glass-fronted office in the City. When firms began recalling staff to the office, many senior lawyers looked at the commute, the open-plan desk, and the billable-hour target, and thought: why?
The numbers tell the story. The Codex Edge Platform Firms Report 2025 found that platform firms are going from strength to strength, with early entrants showing significant headcount growth and continued expansion in the number of firms adopting the structure. Four of the top ten hiring firms across the entire UK legal sector in 2024 were platform firms. The consulting model, as the report’s authors concluded, is no longer niche; it is mainstream, competitive, and reshaping how lawyers think about their careers. A LexisNexis report predicted that by 2026, a third of all UK lawyers could be working as consultants.
Nexa Law sits at the centre of this shift. Founded , in 2017, Nexa Law was designed from the outset to pass as much of its earnings back to its Consultant Solicitors as possible. It now has nearly 200 lawyers, a 300-strong team, offices in Oswestry, London, and Birmingham, and in 2025 made its debut in The Lawyer Top 200 with record revenue. The Lawyer noted that Nexa Law had “plenty of room for growth.”
The Anatomy of a New Model Law Firm
Jargon has a way of obscuring simple ideas. Strip away the branding and the acronyms, and a New Model Law Firm is this: a regulated legal platform that provides almost everything a solicitor needs to practise law.
In the words of co-founder Eliot Hibbert, joining Nexa Law allows lawyers to:
“Set your own hours, workload, and brand identity. With our best-in-class commission rates and minimised overheads you can break free from the salary cap and realise unlimited earning potential.”
The New Model Law Firm takes care of:
- Professional indemnity insurance, with Nexa Law covering the excess in the event of a claim.
- SRA compliance, including COLP and COFA functions, file auditing, and supervision.
- Case management software (LEAP), fully cloud-based.
- Legal research tools (Practical Law) and a Microsoft Office 365 suite.
- Billing, cashiering, and credit control, with fast payment turnaround.
- Postal scanning, telephone support, and registered office services.
- Marketing support, including help building your own personal brand.
In exchange for this infrastructure, you pay a commission on the fees you earn. There are no start-up fees, hidden charges, or joining costs.
The comparison with becoming a sole practice is stark. A solicitor setting up alone must apply for SRA authorisation (a process that takes 12 to 16 weeks), appoint a COLP and COFA, secure professional indemnity insurance independently (with premiums that can be punishing for new firms), set up a client account, purchase practice management software, and manage their own billing, compliance, and marketing. The New Model Law Firm absorbs all of this complexity into the platform. You arrive, plug in, and practise.
How This Differs from Traditional Practice
The distinction between a New Model Law Firm and a traditional firm is structural, and the structure changes everything.
In a traditional firm, you are an employee. The firm owns the client relationship. It sets your billing rate, determines your caseload, controls your schedule, and captures the majority of the economic value you generate. Your reward is a salary, a benefits package, and a position in a hierarchy that may, after a decade or more, lead to partnership.
In a New Model Law Firm, you are self-employed and completely autonomous. You own the client relationship. You set your own billing rate. You choose your clients, your hours, and your location. The firm provides the infrastructure; you provide the expertise. The economic relationship is transparent: you bill, the firm takes its commission, and you keep the rest.
This changes the texture of daily life in ways that are easy to underestimate until you experience them. An employed solicitor who wants to leave early for a family commitment must ask permission. A Consultant Solicitor simply does not schedule work after lunch. An employed solicitor who dislikes a client must take the instruction if the firm wants the work. A Consultant Solicitor says no and moves on.
The trade-off is real. You do not receive holiday pay, sick pay, or employer pension contributions. Time off is self-funded. If you do not work, you do not bill. For some lawyers, that variability is unsettling. For others, the direct link between effort and reward is the first time the economics of their career have made honest sense.
There is a subtler difference, too, one that is harder to quantify but no less significant. In a traditional firm, your professional identity is bound to the institution. Your business card says the firm’s name. In practice, your clients are the firm’s clients. Your reputation is filtered through the brand. In a New Model Law Firm, your reputation is yours. Nexa’s consultants can tmarket under their own brands, use the Nexa Law platform to handle back-office functions, use the Nexa Law brand, or use both. Several Nexa Law consultants run their own client-facing businesses: Samantha Downs runs samanthadowns.co.uk for private client work; Simon Quantrill operates a specialist employment law firm; Lees & Co, run by Tamsyn Lees offers a full range of wills, trusts, and estate administration services. These are all consultant practices, powered by the Nexa Law platform.
Feel the fear…and do it anyway
Every successful Consultant Solicitor felt anxious in the first few months. But if you prepare properly and invest the necessary time in your practice, you will succeed. Donna Taylor, a Private Client Solicitor with Nexa Law told us:
“To anyone thinking of becoming a self-employed consultant solicitor I would say: invest time in building relationships. I spent years networking with financial advisors, accountants and others and it has paid off – I do not need to search for work, all my work comes from referrals.
Secondly, believe in yourself. The support mechanisms are in place at Nexa to help you succeed. It won’t always be easy, but the help is there when you need it.”
The most commonly cited fear is financial: will the clients follow? The evidence suggests they do. Clients rarely buy the building or law firm; they buy the lawyer. When a senior solicitor moves, the clients who valued them personally tend to follow, because what they wanted was always the expertise, not the letterhead.
The second fear is isolation. Solicitors imagine a spare bedroom, a laptop, and silence. The reality of modern traditional offices is often not much more social; many are open-plan spaces where lawyers sit with headphones on, emailing colleagues three desks away. The community that people miss is frequently a memory of an earlier career stage rather than a description of their current working life.
Nexa Law has deliberately built a community rather than leaving it to chance. Practice area heads coordinate knowledge sharing. There are monthly face-to-face networking events around the UK. There are referral networks: if you are a corporate lawyer and your client needs family advice, you refer the work to a colleague within Nexa, and you receive a 15% referral fee. The community exists when you want it. It does not demand your attendance at compulsory socials or performance reviews.
Eliot Hibbert described the philosophy in an interview following the firm’s entry into The Lawyer Top 200: “We work with talented lawyers who value independence, quality, and innovation. Our success comes from truly listening to our people, understanding their ambitions, and giving them the freedom to achieve them.”
How do I join a New Model Law Firm?
Joining is not like applying for a job. There is no vacancy posted on a recruitment website. There is no closing date. There is no panel interview with a hiring partner.
A New Model Law Firm does not have a fixed headcount to fill. Every consultant who joins adds capacity to the platform without adding overhead. The firm grows by attracting talent, and the talent grows by using the platform. The incentives are aligned in a way that traditional firms, where every new hire competes for a share of fixed profits, cannot replicate.
The Conversation
It starts with a phone call. At Nexa Law, you schedule a confidential call with the team. This is an exploration, not an interrogation. Nexa Law wants to understand your practice area, client profile, estimated billings, and reasons for considering the move. You want to understand the platform, the support, the fee-share, and whether it feels like the right fit.
Treat it like a business meeting, because that is what it is. You are not asking for a job. You are evaluating a partnership and seeing if you are a good fit for one another.
The Business Case
If the conversation goes well, you will need to articulate your practice as a business. This means moving beyond generalities. Not “I do employment law,” but “I act for SME employers in the manufacturing sector, billing approximately £180,000 annually, with a referral network of HR consultants and accountants in the West Midlands.” This specificity is protective. It ensures that you are stepping into something grounded.
The Onboarding
Once both sides agree, the onboarding process starts. You will need to complete:
- Compliance training covering anti-money laundering, conflicts of interest, and data protection.
- Systems training on LEAP, the cloud-based case management platform, and on how to open files, manage documents, and use Practical Law.
- Insurance and regulatory setup, ensuring your Practising Certificate is in order and that you are covered under Nexa’s PII policy from day one.
Nexa Law’s support team will guide you through every stage and is available by email, phone, and text. In an internal survey, 100% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that Nexa’s support quality was a significant factor in joining and staying.
How do I build my legal practice as a Consultant Solicitor?
The first months require energy. You are establishing a rhythm, converting contacts into clients, and learning how the platform works. The reason New Model Law Firms require applicants to have a certain number of years’ PQE is that the transition is much, much easier if you have an established client base and plenty of contacts within your practice niche.
Nexa’s referral network helps. If another consultant or Nexa Law itself sends work your way, you retain between 50% and 60% of the fee. If you refer work out, you earn a 15% referral commission. These streams compound. They reward generosity and collaboration, and they create a network effect that benefits every lawyer on the platform.
Why Nexa Law?
Nexa Law’s proposition is specific:
- The fee-share is transparent and in the consultant’s favour from day one.
- There are no minimum billing thresholds before the share kicks in.
- There are no start-up fees, no hidden charges, and no excess on PI claims.
- The technology stack (LEAP, Practical Law, Office 365, document management) is included at no additional cost.
- The firm has grown to nearly 200 lawyers and a 300-strong team, with offices in Oswestry, London, and a new office in Birmingham.
- Nexa Law entered The Lawyer Top 200 in 2025 with record revenue.
- Nexa Law is non-exclusive: consultants are free to work for other firms or pursue other professional activities alongside their Nexa Law practice.
- Consultants can employ their own assistants or teams, who are given access to Nexa Law’s systems.
Eliot Hibbert described Nexa Law’s ethos simply: “Joining Nexa Law allows our consultants to design their careers on their own terms, from setting their hours and workload to building their own brand identity. Put simply, we let lawyers be lawyers.”
The legal profession is changing. The evidence is illustrated by the lived experience of hundreds of solicitors who have already made the move. The New Model Law Firm is not a trend or a fad. It will only continue to grow.
To find out more about becoming a Consultant Solicitor, schedule a call today.
FAQs
What exactly is a New Model Law Firm?
A New Model Law Firm is an SRA-regulated legal platform, often structured as an Alternative Business Structure under the Legal Services Act 2007, that provides compliance, insurance, technology, and back-office support for self-employed consultant solicitors. You practise law under the firm’s regulatory umbrella while retaining the majority of your fees and full control over your clients, hours, and working location.
How does a New Model Law Firm differ from setting up as a sole practitioner?
A sole practitioner must independently secure SRA authorisation (a 12-16 week process), professional indemnity insurance, a client account, practice management software, and compliance infrastructure. A New Model Law Firm absorbs all of this into the platform. You arrive, complete onboarding, and practise from day one with enterprise-grade tools and institutional-level insurance, without the cost or administrative burden of running your own firm.
What experience do I need to join Nexa?
Nexa Law generally expects at least 8 years’ post-qualification experience, a client following or the confidence to build one, and the professional maturity to manage your own practice independently. Applications are considered individually, and Nexa Law invites lawyers who do not meet the 8-year threshold but believe they may be suitable to get in touch.
What does it cost to join?
Nexa Law charges no start-up fees, no joining fees, and no excess on professional indemnity claims. You pay for your own Practising Certificate and your own IT hardware (a laptop and phone). The only ongoing cost is the commission deducted from your billed fees.
Can I build my own brand within a New Model Law Firm?
Yes. Nexa Law’s Consultant Solicitors can trade under their own brand name, use the Nexa Law platform for all back-office functions, use the Nexa Law brand, or a combination of both. Several consultants run their own client-facing websites and practices, powered by Nexa’s infrastructure. The choice is yours, and Nexa’s marketing team can support you whichever route you take.
About the author – John McAuley
John has been a Nexa board member from day one. He has previously founded his own specialist contract recruitment firm, and became friends with Eliot who acted for the sale of his business in 2016. John has an extensive background in achieving growth in business by developing the right marketing strategies, finding high-calibre people and teams, and providing exceptional service levels.