We regularly invite external speakers and guests to meet the Board to discuss our shared goals. This month, we welcomed Mike Freer MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Ministry of Justice. We enjoyed an extremely lively and productive conversation focused on creating a diverse and inclusive legal services profession that meets the needs of everyone who needs and relies on it, and supporting the responsible use of technology to command public trust.
Collaborating for a more diverse and inclusive profession
The Minister’s passion for creating a sector that reflects the society it serves was only too evident. We discussed the LSB’s work programme to ensure regulation plays its part in this. We took the opportunity to thank the Minister and the Ministry of Justice for the recent funding that has enabled the LSB to work with the Judicial Diversity Forum (JDF) to conduct a statistical analysis of the predictors of success in the judicial talent pipeline. This will help identify opportunities for the JDF, the regulators, and others to intervene along career pathways in the profession to support the improvement of diversity in the judiciary. We look forward to sharing the research with the sector shortly.
We agreed that sector leaders had a significant part to play in improving diversity across the profession and creating inclusive cultures in which everyone can succeed. We also discussed the potential role that regulation might play – ensuring consistent and comparable diversity data collection, supporting collaboration, promoting best practice, and sharing the benefits of a diverse and inclusive profession. The Minister shared our view that the pace of change has been too slow and that there is a need for greater focus on tackling entrenched issues through systematic efforts. This is why the LSB has commissioned research to identify structural barriers to access, retention and progression in the legal profession. Such a systems change approach will enable us to pinpoint targeted intervention points for the sector.
We noted that regulation is at least as much about enabling and supporting professional standards as sanctions and enforcement. Leadership in the sector plays a key role in advancing EDI and effecting culture change in the legal profession. The regulatory objectives in the Legal Services Act are cast in proactive terms and place a duty on the LSB and the regulators to encourage an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession. We look forward to working with the Minister and others in pursuit of this and the other objectives.
Technology for access
Another area of focus for our discussion with the Minister was the role of technology in supporting access to justice. We discussed the Board’s stance on technology: regulators should be proactive, not passive, when it comes to fostering a regulatory environment that supports innovation and should seek opportunities to use technology to improve access to justice and reduce unmet legal need. It is vital that people who do not have access to technology are not excluded from the market and that any risks of using technology are managed. But this should not hold the profession back.
We discussed how artificial intelligence (AI) could increase efficiency and reduce costs, meaning resources could be redirected elsewhere and support the sector to be more competitive. We touched on what the expanded use of AI might mean for the role of the lawyer. Perhaps some parts of the role would be eliminated? Possibly, in some areas of law, the role of the lawyer would be refocussed on providing emotional support, and lawyers would need to find other ways to add value? Is it possible that time-based business models would become redundant if technology can complete work much faster? We much enjoyed building on this discussion with the sector on 7 March 2024 at our Reshaping Legal Services Conference 2024.
Increasing public trust through high ethical standards
Our conversation moved on to a broad discussion about professional ethics and the rule of law. We couldn’t meet the Justice Minister without discussing the Post Office Horizon IT scandal in which the role of lawyers has been subject to serious questions. We explained that we have been pushing the regulators to ensure they are ready to address any misconduct by lawyers as soon as possible – likely to be following the inquiry.
We explained that, through our work on professional ethics and the rule of law, we were convening discussions on how we learned from the case. For example, Post Office scandal victim Lee Castleton would be addressing our upcoming annual conference; and we had recently met with the chairs of all the regulatory bodies and approved regulators for a strategic discussion on professional ethics and the rule of law.
We were left with several questions to continue thinking about. For example, how do we ensure high standards of ethics on remote court hearings, which have different,often domestic, settings, and different cultures and expectations? How do we make ethics a golden thread through legal education and ongoing training? How much responsibility do leaders in the profession have for standing up and being clear about the values and cultures that ought to be promoted in the profession? We look forward to continuing the discussion and working with Minister Freer and the sector to make a positive difference in society.
Statutory guidance– technology and Innovation
We turned our minds back to technology and innovation when considering our statutory guidance on promoting technology and innovation to improve access to legal services. This followed an extensive stakeholder engagement and research programme and a public consultation.
There are high levels of unmet legal need and technology has the potential to help address it. Regulation has a role in unlocking this. Picking up our earlier conversation on AI, we noted that our guidance was agnostic about the types of technology and innovation used by the regulators to achieve the outcomes we set. We would, however, be setting out our specific approach to AI in response to a ministerial letter on the subject from the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
The Board approved the guidance, which will be published shortly, alongside the response to our consultation.
The role of AI at the LSB
As part of our meeting, we turned our focus inward to consider the role of AI at the LSB rather than in the sector. The Board explored how AI could make the organisation more efficient and maximise value for money. We noted that as we encourage the sector to embrace innovation, the LSB must do so, too, and we were excited to hear about plans for an internal trial of AI tools. The Board discussed the need to ensure appropriate safeguards were put in place, for example concerning data protection and confidentiality, and were pleased to hear about plans to publish a policy on how we can and will use AI to further improve the way we do our work.