Jonathan Goodwin [1] is a solicitor advocate, specialist in regulatory and professional disciplinary law relating to solicitors and author of Defending Solicitors
Goodwin: Don’t panic, don’t prevaricate
An email from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has a way of rearranging a working day. It arrives in the same inbox as everything else, often in the same measured tone, yet it carries a different weight.
Whatever the merits of the concern it raises, the solicitor reading it is no longer thinking only about a complaint. They are thinking about their reputation, their livelihood and their right to practise.
I have worked in professional discipline since 1996 and have been involved in more than 1,500 regulatory and disciplinary matters. For 20 years, I prosecuted on behalf of the SRA and its predecessor; I have also represented solicitors facing investigation and proceedings.
Sitting on both sides of the table teaches one lesson above all others. Cases are rarely won or lost in the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. They are shaped, often decisively, long before anyone arrives there.
An allegation is not a finding
That the SRA is asking questions establishes nothing. The regulator must first decide whether a concern merits investigation at all, and many investigations end without formal action. A solicitor who reads the first letter as a verdict has misread it.
The opposite error is more common and more costly: treating the opening enquiry as an administrative nuisance to be dispatched between client meetings. That first response becomes part of the record. It will be read again, later, by people deciding a great deal more than whether to ask a further question.
Discipline begins with precision. What exactly is alleged? What information has been requested and under what power? Which professional obligations are engaged?
A complaint about communication raises questions of a wholly different order from an allegation touching client money, honesty or a failure to report. The response must answer the allegation actually made, not the grievance the solicitor understandably feels.
The first 48 hours: control, not confrontation
The instinctive response – a long and indignant reply sent the same evening – is seldom the right one. Silence is worse. What the first two days require is control.
Acknowledge the correspondence. Diarise every deadline. Decide what must be done at once to protect clients, preserve evidence and establish the facts.
Files, correspondence, emails and messages, diary entries, attendance notes and financial records should be secured immediately. A chronology should be prepared while memories are fresh, but it must be an honest one. The contemporaneous documents are the evidence, and they must remain exactly as they were.
Little damages credibility faster than a record that appears to have been improved after the event.
If a deadline cannot realistically be met, say so early, explain why and ask for more time. A reasoned request for an extension is unremarkable. A missed deadline is not.
Where the matter is serious, independent specialist advice at this stage is no luxury and seeking it implies no admission. It reflects a simple truth: an investigation is a process with its own rules, its own risks and its own practical demands, and those who know it well can spare a client mistakes that are very hard to undo.
Co-operation and a robust defence are not opposites
Solicitors owe a real duty to cooperate with their regulator and to give full and accurate explanations and information when asked or required to do so. That duty should be honoured without reservation.
But cooperation is not capitulation. It does not demand an ill-considered admission, speculation to fill gaps in the evidence, or the surrender of legal rights.
A properly advised response establishes the scope and legal basis of each request, checks the material with care and answers the questions that have actually been asked. It distinguishes plainly between what is known and what remains to be verified.
Where a request may reach legally privileged client communications, that question must be confronted before anything is disclosed. Privilege belongs to the client; it is not the solicitor’s to give away.
The High Court’s ruling in September 2026 [2] concerning section 44B of the Solicitors Act 1974 and legally privileged material is a timely reminder that the limits of investigatory powers are matters of substance, not technicalities to be raised as an afterthought.
Further appellate proceedings are being pursued [3] and practitioners would do well to follow them closely. Insisting that a regulator act within its powers is not obstruction. It is part of what makes the process legitimate.
Evidence persuades, indignation does not
Of all the responses to an allegation, protesting that it is unfair is among the least effective. A strong defence is assembled patiently, with each allegation tested against the documents, against the professional obligation said to have been breached, and against an accurate account of what in fact occurred.
That discipline preserves distinctions which tend to vanish in heated exchanges. An error is not necessarily dishonesty. Poor service is not, without more, professional misconduct. An unwelcome outcome does not of itself prove that the decision behind it was improper.
These are not debating points. They are often the difference between a matter that closes and a matter that proceeds.
The same rigour cuts the other way. Where the records show a genuine breach, a blanket denial will not hide it and the attempt will cost far more than it saves. Context, remedial action, risk to clients and candour all carry real weight.
A measured explanation that acknowledges a problem where one exists is frequently more persuasive than an assault on every proposition in sight. Regulators, like tribunals, can tell a solicitor who has understood what went wrong from one who has not.
Whose interests are being protected?
An investigation can open a gap between the interests of a firm and those of the individuals within it.
The firm may need to reassure clients, consider its own reporting obligations and preserve its records. A partner, employee or compliance officer may need separate advice about their own position and may need it quickly. To assume that a single response can serve everyone is a mistake and sometimes a serious one.
Internal investigations therefore call for clearly allocated responsibilities and a disciplined approach to confidentiality, reporting and potential conflicts. The purpose is not to frustrate scrutiny – it is to ensure that the right people take informed decisions, without prejudice to clients or to anyone’s right to a fair defence.
Fair regulation depends on effective representation
The SRA performs an important public function. Clients must be protected and serious misconduct must meet a proper response; no responsible practitioner suggests otherwise.
But public confidence in the profession rests equally on regulation that is proportionate, founded on evidence and fair to those whose careers depend on its outcome. Effective representation is not an obstacle to that end. It is one of the conditions for reaching it.
That conviction is why I wrote Defending Solicitors [4]: to guide practitioners through the process from first contact with the regulator to, where it comes to that, proceedings before the tribunal and on appeal. It is not a case against regulation. It is a case for careful decisions, tested evidence and a defence that takes the process seriously from the first day.
Three decades have distilled the lesson into a few words. Do not panic. Do not prevaricate. Do not mistake a forceful response for an effective one. Establish the facts, understand the duties, protect the client and answer with care.
The first decisions are seldom the last word, but they very often decide what the last word will be.