Legal regulators to launch single consumer website

The SRA is joining forces with the other legal regulators to launch a new combined consumer website next month called 'Legal Choices'.

The move comes against the background of a call today from the LSB for a single legal services regulator. The regulators involved are the BSB, ILEX professional standards, the CLC, the Costs Lawyers Standards Board, the Intellectual Property Board and the Faculty Office.

Under the slogan 'putting you in the driving seat with your lawyer', the website will offer "something totally new in terms of legal services empowerment", according to papers for tomorrow's board meeting.

The SRA said the site would "for the first time provide a market-wide picture of legal services covering all the different types of lawyer and law firm, as well as a whole range of support and advice suggestions".

The regulator went on: "Legal Choices is a new website being designed for consumers, based on the things people have told us really matter if they find themselves needing to use a legal service.

"It will signpost people to information and support provided by different legal regulators and aim to help people with the choices and decisions they are faced with before, during, or after using a legal service."

The SRA said Legal Choices would be "loaded with surveys, polls and quizzes" and enable consumers to feed their views straight to the legal regulators.

"With so much information and advice already out there about legal services we are not looking to add to this, but just cut a clear path through so that members of the public can find what they need."

Mehrunnisa Lalani, the SRA's director of inclusion, said: "This is the second stage of our work to empower consumers in the legal services market.

"All too often we hear about confusion that people face when they need to access a legal service, and the perception that many big decisions are effectively left to chance, if consumers don't have the tools they need to make the right choices.

"Over the past 18 months we have listened to what people have told us they need. Often this amounts simply to getting the right information, in the right format, at the right time."