Today is the day when, finally, more than four years after the Legal Services Act received Royal Assent, the SRA started accepting applications for Alternative Business Structures (ABS), thus meaning we’re on the cusp of a possible “titanic battle for the hearts and minds of potential customers” as the new style legal businesses jump into [...]
A Blog about UK Legal Services Deregulation
Tag Archive: SRA
The Cost of Compliance?
Last month the Law Society published the outcome of a survey it had conducted amongst small firms, which claimed that 1 in 10 small practices were planning to close down because of the cost of complying with the regulatory regime contained in the new Solicitors’ Handbook, commonly known as “Outcomes Focused Regulation” (OFR) would [...]
Legal Ombudsman Predicts Confusion Ahead
One of the main reasons behind the creation of the Legal Services Act was the then government’s perception that the framework for the provision of legal services in the UK was “out-dated, inflexible, over-complex and insufficiently accountable or transparent”(*). The then existing regulatory structure was then replaced with a new edifice that supposedly addressed these [...]
New SRA Draft Handbook Published
In my last post I wrote about “OFR” and the SRA roadshows promoting the proposed new regulatory regime. The draft handbook has now been published by the SRA and is available by clicking here. The handbook is open for consultation until 20th August 2010. So I won’t be rushing to read it this weekend, especially [...]
Freedom in Practice: Outcomes Focused Regulation
Outcomes Focused Regulation, or OFR for short, is the buzzword du jour at the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) at the moment. Charles Plant (Chairman) and Antony Townsend (Chief Executive) are conducting a series of roadshows around the country on the subject, which is promoted with the subtitle “Freedom in Practice”. This is the SRA’s proposed [...]
