LSB’s assessment demands increased transparency and more robust decision-making by legal regulators

The Legal Service Board’s (LSB) assessment demands increased transparency and more robust decision-making by legal regulators.

The LSB has published its annual assessment of the performance of eight legal services regulators.

Each body regulates different types of lawyers and carries out its responsibilities differently. However, they have the same obligations under the Legal Services Act 2007. They are expected to demonstrate how they put consumers, the public interest and the regulatory objectives at the heart of their work.

The regulators are assessed against the same five standards: Regulatory Approach, Authorisation, Supervision, Enforcement, and Well-led.

They are rated as providing:

• • ‘sufficient’ assurance (green)
  • ‘partial’ assurance (amber)
  • ‘insufficient’ assurance (red)

The table below sets out the latest ratings for each regulator:

The Costs Lawyer Standards Board provided sufficient assurance for all the standards. The Bar Standards Board provided insufficient assurance against the Well-led and Enforcement standards and partial assurance against the other three. The other regulators provided a mix of partial and sufficient assurance across the standards.

The assessment identified several common themes that need to be addressed by all regulators. There is a need for increased transparency, particularly in relation to how regulators make decisions. Although some regulators had appropriate policies, they do not appear to be implementing them effectively, as it is difficult from published material to understand the decisions made by regulators and reasons for these decisions. 

Some regulators have made progress in how they gather evidence about their regulated community and consumers and the impact of their regulatory arrangements on these groups. However, there is still room for improvement in demonstrating how this evidence is used in regulatory work. Some regulators also need to adopt a more proactive approach to supervision and ensure they apply lessons from any supervisory activities to their other regulatory work.

Chris Nichols, Director of Policy and Regulation at Legal Services Board, said:

“Through our regulatory assessment, we seek assurance that the regulators are well-led, have an effective approach to regulation, and are explicitly focused on the public interest.

“Overall, we have seen welcome improvement in some areas from most of them, and there are some examples of good practice for everyone to learn from and build on. However, there continue to be areas where further improvement is needed.

“We expect regulators to operate transparently and ensure they have a sufficiently robust evidence base for their work. This is central to being a well-led organisation and ensures others, including the public, can understand how decisions are made and hold the regulator to account. For a number of regulators there is more work to do in this regard.

“Over the coming year, we will roll out our new framework for assessing regulators’ performance.

“We will follow up on the themes and issues identified in this assessment and expect all the regulators to continue working on improving their performance, benefiting the profession and ensuring legal services better meet the needs of society.”

Kindly shared by Legal Services Board (LSB)

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