Unleashed | Tackling the new reporting requirements

I did my first bungee jump six years ago. The jump was from the bridge spanning Zambia and Zimbabwe and was adjacent to the Victoria Falls. The height of the jump was approximately 790 feet which is very close to the height of the Canary Wharf tower. Somehow I had been encouraged to make this leap into the unknown above a swirling River Zambezi populated by crocodiles and hippos and attached only to a rather tired and frayed piece of elastic. I doubt I was insured for the jump. I did not really know quite what was going to happen and standing on the edge of the bridge when the guy behind me counted me down probably ranks as one of the scariest ten seconds of my life. By the way, for those that are getting a little bit nervous: no, Cosmo the dog did not come with me; he was very sensibly thousands of miles away at home.

Of course all went well. It is probably right that a leap off the bridge spanning Zambezi is probably safer than the average journey on the M1. It was still very frightening and not for the faint-hearted.

Leaps into the unknown are always unnerving. Doing something you have never done before is challenging, difficult and stressful. Sometimes the unknown can be an unexpected surprise

Last week we had our first Specialist Quality Mark audit undertaken not by the Legal Services Commission but by an independent organisation, SQM Delivery Partnership. As a somewhat frazzled veteran of many an audit over the last 20 years I did not know what to expect. Pleasantly it was a very polished discreet (albeit probing) audit which ended up very successfully and everyone in the office felt that while their systems had been well and truly looked at, the audit itself had not been unnecessarily gruelling.

O

FR unknowns

My next step into the unknown is going

?to be outcomes focused regulation. I am for my sins the firm’s COFA and one of my partners has been chosen to be the COLP. I have set to work immediately in putting together an action plan for my role. I am setting up systems and paperwork to demonstrate to any SRA officer that I am taking the role seriously, that I know ?

what I am supposed to be doing and that what I am supposed to be doing is actually being done.

Nevertheless there are still unknowns. Stories abound of what I am supposed to report the firm for. Am I supposed to contact the SRA if I am a day late paying the PAYE or a couple of days late paying the rent? If such reports become the norm I suspect that the SRA postbag will become a little unmanageable unless they are resourced to deal with every such report.

It is fair to say that being the COFA of a firm is a daunting appointment. On the other hand as managing partner in any event, it was always my duty to look at the bank accounts on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis and to keep a very tight handle on our daily reconciliations, trial balances and other financial data

?which our computer spews out in gargan-tuan quantities.
-valent of the crocs and hippos that are found in the Zambezi.

Of course one of the advantages of having the SQM and a Lexcel accreditation is that we do have systems in place which have been looked at independently and which hopefully will go some way towards making life under OFR more palatable. Nevertheless until we have seen it in action and until I have sent my first few reports off to the SRA I will not be in a position to know exactly how matters are going to be dealt with.

That is not to say the SRA are the equi

Hopefully given a fair wind we can avoid any problems of that sort the same way that my successful bungee jump allowed me to be winched back up at its conclusion, safe to tell the tale.

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