LETR: SRA says report will inform its reforms

The SRA has responded to the publication of the LETR, stating that the report would provide a starting point from which to consider a series of radical reforms.

Key priorities for the SRA include working out how to:

• ensure the correct level of competence necessary for qualification is demonstrated.
• assure continuing competence;
• enable greater flexibility in the delivery of education and training by avoiding unnecessary regulatory restrictions;
• improve access, equality of opportunity and diversity; and
• achieve the right balance of responsibilities between the regulators, education providers, law firms and legal professionals.

SRA Chair Charles Plant said: "The high quality of legal services protects individuals, enables effective business transactions and secures global competitive advantage for the UK. Our education and training system underpins that high quality, but the environment in which legal services are delivered has changed and is changing. The report indicates areas that need addressing if we are to ensure that legal education and training remain fit for purpose in the radically altering world of legal services, nationally and internationally. The SRA needs to ensure that it is setting the right standards for modern legal practice for solicitors and others delivering legal services, that it is using effective mechanisms to assure the standards which it sets, and that it is not imposing unnecessary restrictions."

He went on: "The LETR research report will be invaluable in our programme of reforms. Using that review and our own findings, we will be discussing key priorities with our stakeholders over the next few months, and will publish a policy statement later in the year. We will take account of the needs of consumers across the legal sector and the wider public interest and ensure that our work is properly co-ordinated with that of the other regulators."

A set of six strategic principles, agreed by the SRA Board, will guide this work. They are:

• The overriding need to meet the regulatory objectives of the Legal Services Act.
• Ensuring alignment and integration with the SRA's outcomes focused approach to regulation.
• Being prescriptive only where necessary, minimising bureaucracy and targeting regulation and resources to areas of identified risk.
• Finding an appropriate balance of regulatory requirements between individual legal services providers, individuals holding specific regulatory roles and the regulated entities within which they work.
• Facilitating flexibility and avoiding unnecessary barriers to access within a framework of clearly articulated and robust standards.
• Ensuring consistency in the standards that we set and the ways in which we require individuals and entities to demonstrate compliance with those standards.