One of the key figures behind doomed Metamorph Group has returned to the legal scene for the first time since the consolidator’s collapse.

A filing at Companies House discloses that Tony Stockdale, who is still listed as a director of Metamorph, has taken on the same role with Shrewsbury-based Legal and Professional Services Limited. Stockdale was made a director on 3 October for what was his 80th appointment, according to Companies House. He had previously been a director with the same company for 10 months before resigning in November 2022.

Tony Stockdale

Stockdale was made a director on 3 October

The company has links with the subscription network Quality Solicitors. Quality Solicitors Organisation Ltd is registered at the same address as Legal and Professional Services Limited, which was called QS Legal Limited until March this year.

Metamorph Group had partly owned Legal and Professional Services Limited until November 2022, when new management duo Victoria Browning and Paul Rawson were appointed directors. They had bought Quality Solicitors as a brand from Metamorph and vowed to grow the network and the services on offer.

Browning is also one of three active directors with Legal and Professional Services Limited, although Rawson resigned last November.

The company number provided on the Quality Solicitors website is for Quality Solicitors Organisation Limited, where Browning is the sole remaining director.

Stockdale is not a solicitor but was at the forefront of Metamorph’s rapid expansion during the past decade, acting as executive chairman while the company bought a number of law firms.

But the business foundered, and the Solicitors Regulation Authority intervened into four entities – Beaumont ABS, Atray Limited, MLL Limited and BPL Solicitors – in December 2022. This action was deemed necessary by the SRA ‘to protect the interests of clients’ and involved agents going into 12 branches to seize 1,000 boxes of live matters, advising clients to find alternative solicitors, and collect 60,000 boxes of closed matter files.

Further interventions followed in the subsequent weeks and all the Metamorph Group entities have now closed. Metamorph Group itself continues to exist with Stockdale as the sole remaining director. It was most recently subject to a compulsory strike-off action last year but that was later suspended.

Stockdale had not been appointed to lead any companies from November 2022 until this month.