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More than 450 firms have started the alternative business structure application process over the past year, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has revealed. Having started accepting applications on 3 January 2012, the SRA said that 454 firms have since started the process.

An outcomes-focused, risk-based approach to regulating the activities of most lawyers who deliver legal services in a post-Legal Services Act landscape is a fact of life. Yet you still don’t have to go far to find solicitors who either fail to grasp the concept or hanker after the old, detailed rules-based system. The degree of non-acceptance is profound, more than a year after outcomes-focused regulation came in – in October 2011. So persistent is it that the SRA may be relying on the insertion of compliance officers for legal practice and financial administration (COLPs and COFAs) into the fabric of every firm to help change attitudes.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority giving solicitors positive permission to hold client money is one of the options it will consider as part of the review of conveyancing, it has emerged. It has also expressed concern about mortgage lenders using solicitors as an insurance policy against problems.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has abandoned plans to impose a group-wide approach to the regulation of firms which engage in activities overseas as it launched a second consultation on amending the SRA Handbook in relation to international practice.

Nearly 90% of firms had their compliance officers in place for the start of the new regime yesterday, with the rest either yet to have their nominations approved or, in the case of 194 firms, failed to complete the process at all.