The Board met in person on 11 June 2024. We welcomed newly appointed Board Member Christine Nwaokolo to her first meeting. We look forward to benefitting from her front-line experience as a lawyer as we work to ensure that legal services better meet the needs of consumers and the public.
We were also delighted to welcome Craig Westwood, who assumes the role of our new chief executive on 19 August 2024. We were pleased he could observe the meeting as he prepares to join the organisation.
Maintaining lawyers’ high standards of conduct and behaviour
Our work is focussed closely on ensuring consumers receive a high-quality service when seeking legal advice. When things go wrong due to a lawyer’s improper behaviour or misconduct, regulators must have effective disciplinary and enforcement processes. We want to ensure they all have a consistent approach that builds public confidence and upholds proper standards of conduct and competence.
As part of our review of regulators’ different approaches, the Board considered draft principles that should underpin an effective process. The principles were developed in collaboration with all the regulators, who strongly emphasised the importance of accountability, inclusivity, and fairness, which the Board welcomed. We also encouraged an approach that reflects the crucial importance of learning from disciplinary cases to prevent similar instances of misconduct. Learning should inform lawyers’ education and training to ensure their ongoing competence. This would help raise standards and reduce the number of issues that turn into service complaints or lead to disciplinary and enforcement action.
This review also links to our unwavering commitment to professional ethics. It is of utmost importance for our functioning society that lawyers’ conduct does not undermine the rule of law and proper administration of justice. We will ensure regulation enables lawyers to uphold the standards the public expects. We are determined to inspire a workplace culture for legal professionals in which ethical conduct is never in doubt and to ensure that regulation fiercely promotes the public interest.
The Board is very grateful for the input from the regulators and others into this work so far, and we look forward to hearing more views ahead of a consultation on policy options.
Improved openness about fees lawyers pay for regulation
Individual lawyers and legal firms must pay a practising certificate fee (PCF) to their approved regulator each year to practise. It pays for the regulatory activities, among other things. Regulators can collect a PCF only when the LSB has approved the fee level.
In 2021, we published a new approach to the PCF to increase transparency on how legal services regulators set and spend it. We wanted to encourage a meaningful debate on the cost and benefits of regulation and improve standards. We also wanted to ensure that regulators demonstrate that they have sufficient funds and financial resilience to regulate effectively and efficiently when they apply to have their fee level approved.
We have evaluated the impact of our changes, and the Board has concluded that the quality of regulators’ applications has significantly improved. They have enabled us to examine applications more thoroughly and scrutinise the use and impact of PCFs. The Board also noted and welcomed the significant increase in levels of engagement and transparency around the collection and spending of the fee by frontline regulators.
LSB Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24
Continuing the theme of transparency and proper use of financial resources, the Board reviewed and approved our Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24 on recommendation from the Audit Risk and Assurance Committee. The report demonstrates our impact in the last financial year and is due to be signed by the Comptroller and Auditor General and laid before Parliament next month.
The next Board meeting is on 23 July 2024.