Editor's blog | Tribes at war

Nobody wants to see their parents argue in public all the time. Or at all. Yet this is the impression with every new report by the Legal Services Board reviewing the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s performance. The latest, published earlier this week is even worse; it’s a full-on attack on the regulator’s failure to set up and roll out an effective enforcement process.

The SRA has failed to provide evidence of a modernisation programme and of a joined-up and consistent assessment of risk, the LSB said, before concluding that there was “considerable progress to make” to reach agreed standards.

According to Victoria House, the SRA takes too long to resolve cases (more than a year), has not assessed whether policies such as regulatory settlements were effective at flushing out bad behaviour, and it should have carried out a proper analysis of the benefits of its action for both consumers and solicitors. Worse, there appeared to be a disconnect between the supervision and enforcement functions of the SRA. Unsurprisingly, the SRA disagrees.

These are serious issues, not just for regulators but for the profession too. But the bigger question for practitioners is whether the time and effort expanded on regulating the frontline regulator is worth their money.

The LSB is acutely aware of the accusation that, as an additional layer of regulation, it needs additional funding, and that, once again, lawyers are writing the cheques. Victoria House, on the other hand, rarely misses an opportunity to remind us that it costs only about £30 per lawyer per year. That’s the direct financial cost, and mostly, there isn’t much to quibble about the principle.

Less readily justifiable is the sheer amount of time and resources that regulating the regulators seems to absorb. Time and resources that could be spent on regulating or supervising firms, or on enforcement. Pound for pound, for every report written about regulation, a firm somewhere isn’t being supervised or investigated.

Both the LSB and the SRA are in a race to catch up on lost time. Together, they have to organise and run a regulatory structure capable of meeting the Legal Services Act’s requirements. There is still a lot of ground to cover from the days where all three representative, regulatory and complaints functions were within the single remit of the Law Society. Outcomes-focused regulation is a step in the right direction but it is only a mechanism for the SRA to deliver a more targeted approach in a more transparent and effective way.

It is undoubtedly right that the regulator should be held to account by the LSB. Having made its expectations clear, the LSB now needs to be less of a policeman and more of a mentor. Both – perhaps inevitably – have serious credibility issues with the profession. Their regular public spats are indicators of the seriousness and complexity of their task. But if the profession is to be more trusting of their joint ability to regulate effectively and proportionately, their relationship now needs to move to a more constructive plane.