The recent announcement by the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEX), the governing body and ‘approved regulator’ for chartered legal executives, that it is contemplating moving its delegated regulatory authority from CILEX Regulation to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has understandably caused a stir. The response of CILEX Regulation (the current delegated regulatory body) that CILEX has no power to do this has resulted in the episode being described as a public spat. But a spat is usually something that is brief and about an issue that is petty or not that important. This quarrel is none of those things, and so it matters. Continue reading
Category Archives: Regulation
The fig-leaf of protection for consumer harm
It is almost two years since the Final Report of the Independent Review of Legal Services Regulation was published (all of the Review’s papers are available here). The catalyst for the Review was the market study carried out by the Competition and Markets Authority. The CMA concluded that the legal sector was not working well for consumers. In carrying out its work, the CMA made several references to consumer harm and detriment. So, too, did the Final Report.
However, what transpired in conversations following the Final Report was that the nature of consumer harm was largely being assumed or only illustrated. A core goal of regulation – the protection of consumers from harm – faced some under-developed but important challenges. What exactly are the types of consumer harm in legal services, the causes of that harm, the consequences of experienced harm, and the particular remedies that might be available for it (depending on its nature and who caused it)?
The Supplementary Report to the IRLSR (Consumer harm and legal services: from fig leaf to legal well-being, published today) seeks to answer these questions, and this post is taken from the Preface.
Regulation: from infection to inflection point
Here is a fascinating podcast: a conversation between Jordan Furlong (guest) and Professor Mike Madison of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law (host) on the future of law, re-regulation, access to justice, and the rule of law. Over many years, Jordan has perfected the gift of identifying nails in the legal services sector and then hitting each of them firmly on the head. This episode has a good number of those nails. In this post, I pick up on some of the themes it explores.
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StephenMayson 