The Legal Services Board has said that a number of regulators are not meeting its requirements to provide a list of those they regulate and to include information about their disciplinary record.19
The findings came from the publication of a performance review and referenced the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Council for Licensed Conveyancers, Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales, Intellectual Property Regulation Board and Master of Faculties.
The report said that all had work in progress to put a full register in place and that senior level meetings had taken place to develop the registers further.
Sarah Chambers of the Legal Services Consumer Panel suggests that the issue should now be escalated beyond initial conversations with CEOs and Chairs.
“Could the regulators benefit from a thorough review and analysis of transparency around sanctions sooner rather than later,” she asks. “It is even more urgent at a time when the flagship consumer-facing website Legal Choices [run by all the legal regulators] is being redeveloped.”
With the current trend towards encouraging firms to be transparent on service as well as price very much at the forefront of the regulators’ minds, firms will be interested to see what level of detail about their lawyers might reach the public domain the future.