English report calls for all-embracing legal regulator
All providers of legal services in England & Wales, whether legally qualified or not, should be registered and regulated, according to a major review of legal services conducted by Stephen Mayson, Honorary Professor of Law at University College London (UCL) and published today.
His report of more than 300 pages, Reforming Legal Services: Regulation beyond the echo chambers, which has been submitted to the Lord Chancellor, is the outcome of a two-year independent review into the regulation of legal services in England & Wales, established by UCL as a response to the 2016 legal market study conducted by the Competition & Markets Authority.
In place of the "cumbersome" arrangement of 10 front-line regulators plus an oversight regulator, established following the Legal Services Act 2007, the report recommends a single, independent Legal Services Regulation Authority, established as an arm’s length regulatory agency, to ensure a common and consistent approach across the legal sector.
This would oversee all providers of legal services, whether qualified and currently regulated or not and including technology-based providers, all being subject to registration and regulation. With perhaps half of consumers who seek legal help doing so from unregulated advisers, the report considers they are exposed to risks that they are often not aware of.
However regulation should be "targeted and proportionate", and take account of risk, burden and cost. The legal activities currently reserved to qualified lawyers should be reviewed and replaced with legal services that require prior authorisation because of their high public importance or high risk to consumers. Defined low-risk services would only require registration. Higher-risk services would carry additional regulatory conditions.
The minimum protections for consumers would include standards of expected performance, indemnity insurance, and access to a revised and more extensive legal services ombudsman acting as a single point of entry for investigation and redress for complaints made by individual consumers or small businesses.
With technology-driven legal advice, the report recommends that an appropriate person should be registered as the "provider".
It also calls for statutory protection for all legal professional titles. It should be an offence for someone who is not on the register, or a title-holder to pretend or imply that they are, or to use any description that suggests so.
Professor Mayson commented: "The current regulatory structure provides an incomplete and limited framework for legal services that is not able in the near-term and beyond to meet the demands and expectations placed on it, particularly with the emergence and rapid development of alternative providers and lawtech.
"The recommendations in this report seek to create a level playing field for legal services and enhance consumer protection, through targeted and proportionate regulation."
The Scottish Legal Complaints Commission has welcomed what it described as a "comprehensive and thoughtful report".
In a statement the SLCC, which supports the Roberton report proposal for a single independent regulator in Scotland, added: "Many of the challenges and principles the report identifies are equally relevant to our context here in Scotland, and its recommendations for improvement are therefore vital reading for the Scottish legal services sector.
"Thirteen years on from the [Legal Profession and Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 2007] that created our current model of regulation, there is agreement across the sector that reform is needed, to better serve consumers seeking legal advice and representation, and to better reflect the legal services sector of today and of the future."