Annual Compliance Support for Law Firms

A familiar picture: a capable COLP or COFA holding the compliance role alongside fee earning or practice management. They know the regulations and what needs doing. What they lack is the hours to maintain the framework properly while meeting every other obligation.

Another: a managing partner whose firm has grown past the point where compliance can be run informally, but not to the point where a full-time compliance officer makes financial sense.

Legal Eye’s Compliance Annual Support Packages exist for both.

What the role actually demands

The SRA’s Standards and Regulations require a risk-based approach, and that has real weight behind it: policies and procedures matched to your practice areas, risk assessments that genuinely drive activity, supervision arrangements, evidence of competence and training, and systems for monitoring and reporting. All of it documented, maintained and updated as regulation changes and the firm grows.

For one person carrying other responsibilities, that workload is unsustainable. Even firms with in-house compliance teams gain from external challenge and specialist knowledge.

The package starts with a gap analysis

Before proposing any arrangement, we run a firmwide risk and compliance gap analysis. It shows us your current position, practice areas, risk profile and priorities, and it shows you what’s working, what needs attention and where support would add most value.

The package is then designed around what the analysis found. Some firms need policy development and documentation. Some have sound policies and need help embedding them. Others want an ongoing file review programme, training delivery, or support responding to regulatory change.

What’s included

Every package includes the full set of precedent documents, which we then adapt with you to your work types and clients. A policy only protects you if it describes what your firm actually does.

We also document the reasoning behind compliance decisions and recommendations. Regulators expect to see a risk-based approach; written reasoning is what demonstrates one. Your compliance plan, risk register and practice-wide risk assessment become working documents you can put in front of the SRA with confidence.

Support runs through the whole year, so when regulation moves or the firm changes, expert guidance is a phone call away.

What firms get from it

Time back: expert-prepared documents and guidance replace hours of research and drafting, freeing you for implementation and your day job.
Regulatory confidence: when the SRA asks questions or a client requests evidence of your arrangements, the documentation exists and the risk-based reasoning behind it is on record.
A sounding board: complex compliance questions, tested against our experience across hundreds of law firms in every practice area.
Predictable cost: the package is spread over 12 consecutive monthly payments, priced from your gap analysis rather than a flat rate, so you pay for the support you need.

Who delivers it

Our team includes former solicitors who have held COLP roles, former SRA case handlers who know what regulators look for, and experienced compliance professionals. Practical advice, delivered without judgment.

Who this suits

Small and medium-sized firms below the threshold for a full-time compliance hire. Firms where the COLP or COFA carries significant other responsibilities. Practices outgrowing informal arrangements, preparing for accreditation, or wanting external challenge to an in-house framework.