The Solicitors Regulation Authority: looking to the future

ABSTRACT The legal market is changing. Whether individual consumer or corporate client, the choice of services available to help manage or solve legal problems appears increasingly wide. Business process outsourcing, technology and data companies, accountants and other professional advisors are offering corporate clients new options to manage their legal affairs. Law firms are responding to this increasing competitive pressure with new services of their own. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), as the largest legal regulator in the UK, is liberalising its approach to regulation, removing prescriptions and inflexibilities, so that business and solicitors can compete and thrive in this changing market. The proposals will introduce greater flexibility for individual solicitors (including those currently described as in-house) to offer services to the public (including corporate clients) from businesses outside of legal regulation. A simpler and shorter Code of Conduct, focused separately on individual solicitors and firms that the SRA authorises, will increase flexibility and establish clear and high standards. The SRA expects that the increasing focus on proportionate and targeted regulation will support increased economic growth and thereby access to justice.