Lay chairs requirement should apply to all regulators

New rules should apply not only to the SRA and BSB but also to the accountants' regulator

The Legal Services Board's plans for the main frontline regulators to appoint lay persons as chairs of their boards were unlikely to be greeted with unanimous joy.

Unveiled in October last year, the proposals were met with the usual suspicion from the Bar Standards Board and polite disagreement by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Four months on, the super-regulator has made up its mind: whoever succeeds Charles Plant at the SRA and Ruth Deech at the BSB, both of whom are due to step down later this year, will have to be a non-lawyer.

The main objection to lay persons as chairs is that it runs contrary to appointment on merit. This is slightly disingenuous. The requirement to appoint a lay chair is not about merit. It's about ensuring independence from professional bias. LSB chair David Edmonds' concern is that a lawyer chair faced with a situation where professional interests may be in conflict with public interest may, perhaps not deliberately, "come down on the side of their profession and its traditions".

You may find Edmonds' stance objectionable but the profession still has a lot of work to do to regain credibility with the public. The attitude of the representative body over the years has contributed significantly to the adverse predicament in which the profession finds itself. It's one of the reasons the government forced liberalisation on the sector, allowing non-solicitors to own law firms, and setting up a separate complaints body keen on holding legal services providers to account.

Having lay chairs may not be the most urgent priority in the current economic climate. But it is symbolic of a wider move, and one which the profession shouldn't just dismiss as unjustified interventionism or misunderstanding about professional values. It could play a significant part generally in rebuilding trust in the profession while also, locally, making law firms really think about themselves as businesses and genuinely think in terms of client services.

Which is why it is surprising that, at present, the lay chair rules will only apply to the BSB and SRA, not to licensed conveyancers or accountants. As it happens, licensed conveyancers already have a non-lay chair. But considering the potential for accountancy firms to become significant providers of legal services, it seems unfair to exempt them from this new requirement simply because at the moment they are not.

Accountancy firms having been pressing for legal privilege to be extended to their services. So far they have failed, most recently in the Prudential case. But they will keep pushing that argument - see for instance the Tchenguiz case yesterday where Grant Thornton sought to justify non-disclosure on this basis.

And there are concerns that accountancy firms converting to ABSs under the SRA's jurisdiction could very legitimately claim they should be protected. There are more accountants than solicitors, and while few have openly expressed interest in offering legal advice as ABSs, they can.

On these grounds alone, there is no reason why they should not be regulated in exactly the same way as solicitors and subject to the same standards and professional requirements. There is no reason why they should be exempt. If the LSB wants all providers to have unhindered access and the public to be equally protected, the same rules should apply to all.