Legal Services Board

The Legal Services Board should focus on tackling sexual harassment in the workplace instead of pushing its agenda of ‘change for change’s sake’, the Law Society has said.

The Legal Services Board is on the hunt for its fourth chief executive in nine years after Neil Buckley decided to stand down after just over three years in the role.

The Legal Services Board has closed its investigation into the Law Society’s governance arrangements – which led to an unprecedented public censure last year – after a series of reforms.

The Law Society has said it is “deeply concerned” that new rules proposed by the Legal Services Board could largely prevent it from either lobbying or criticising the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The position of the smaller legal regulators has been thrust into the spotlight, with the chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel suggesting that one may be at risk of losing its right to regulate.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is “not sufficiently transparent” in explaining its decisions at board level, the Legal Services Board has said, while ticking off other regulators too.

The £30m that the Law Society levies on solicitors for its representative work is to be put under the microscope by the Legal Services Board next year.

The Bar could be “sleep walking into a nightmare scenario” where new rules mean it has no involvement with its regulator, the incoming chairman of the Bar Council has warned.

The level of innovation in the legal market has “stagnated and fallen in some areas” in recent years, but there are a number of encouraging signs for the future, major new research has revealed.

The Legal Services Board has been told by its own consumer panel that it has to share the responsibility for ensuring that consumers do not suffer at the hands of solicitors working for unregulated firms.

The Legal Services Board has approved the new SRA Handbook, including the controversial proposal to allow solicitors to provide unreserved services to the public from unregulated businesses.

New rules which clearly limit the influence the Law Society can have on the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and the Bar Council on the Bar Standards Board, have been published.

The frontline regulators are making “very good progress” in improving price transparency, the Legal Services Board has said – but its consumer panel was far less impressed.

The Legal Services Board has stepped carefully into the debate over legal aid cuts by highlighting the increasing number of people handling legal problems alone.

The Legal Services Board has approved new rules proposed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority requiring law firms to publish prices for a range of consumer and business services.