The Legal Education and Training Review report was published this week to a collective ‘meh’. In an age of instant judgements, that it failed to deliver either a devastating critique of the current regime or suggest sweeping reforms for the future seemed to mean to many that it was already destined for the long grass. Worse still, in the eyes of some (including, dare I say, my fellow hacks), it ran to 350 pages, used some jargon and had been compiled by academics.

At the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, we are keen to see more change in the regulation and delivery of legal services before we see a reduction in the number of regulators. But there is one area that we do think is ripe for simplification now and that is in the arrangements for compensation. A single compensation fund across all regulators would bring real consumer benefits and reduce regulatory costs.

Your COFA should live, sleep, eat and breathe financial management. This isn’t optional; rule 1 of the Accounts Rules demands compliance with the SRA principles and Code of Conduct in relation to effective financial management of the firm. So what is effective financial management? Outcomes-focused regulation usually means you have to guess what the SRA expects; however, in a rare moment of clarity, the SRA has explained exactly what good and bad financial management looks like.

According to Professor Gillian Hadfield of the University of Southern California, we live in a world that is “flooded with law”. Surely lawyers, with their training, experience and understanding of legal issues, should be overwhelmed with demand for their help in navigating a safe route through our daily existence? Yet all the evidence suggests otherwise.

The pricing function in most law firms is something of an orphan. No-one knows who it belongs to, so it ends up belonging to no-one. Individual department heads and fee-earners make decisions on the fly with little regard to the firm’s pricing policies, processes and protocols. Oh, that’s right, we don’t have any firm-wide pricing policies, processes and protocols to speak of. If I had to isolate a single factor that contributes most to the failure of a firm’s pricing strategy, it is a lack of pricing leadership. Yes, senior partners, managing partners and CEOs, I am speaking directly to you.