A traditional Witney law firm has undergone a shake-up after becoming one of the first in the country to allow non-lawyers to help run the company.

John Welch & Stammers, of Church Green, which can trace its history back to 1932, has appointed Bernadette Summers, who is not a lawyer, as managing partner after being licensed under the new alternative business structures scheme.

The move will also see supermarket brand the Co-operative able to offer a full range of legal services for the first time, with more alternative providers such as banks and the AA set to follow.

Mrs Summers, who has been practice manager at John Welch & Stammers for 12 years, said: “One of our partners retired last December but I couldn’t apply for the position because I wasn’t a solicitor, although I do fee-earning work such as wills. But now I can have the recognition the solicitor partners have, which I could not have before.”

John Welch & Stammers is just one of two solicitors’ firms in the country, along with Co-operative Legal Services, to gain a licence as an alternative business structure from the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority.

The move to allow companies such as supermarket chains to offer full legal services arena has caused controversy and raised fears it could spell the end for small high street solicitors’ firms already hit by Legal Aid spending cuts.

Simon McCrum, managing partner at Darbys solicitors, in New Inn Hall Street, Oxford, said: “It is going to decimate old suppliers of legal services and a lot of high street firms will disappear.

“People who don’t compete with new entrants are going to lose out.”