As the new chair of the Solicitors Regulation Authority board, I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute a regular column to the Gazette. There are many challenges ahead, which I will discuss fully in subsequent editions.

Most of the board of the SRA are new to the task. However, all the members bring a range of expertise and experience that will help us to forge a dynamic and collaborative partnership with the profession – one appropriate for all the types of organisation in which solicitors practise and one able to respond effectively to a complex environment that is changing with unprecedented speed.

My first message is that we at the SRA recognise that to succeed in our task we must engage fully with those we regulate, and in so doing create a climate in which all solicitors will more readily engage with us. Many solicitors are unaware of the big developments that lie ahead, and do not appreciate how they will impact either on their practices or the role of the SRA.

We at the SRA also recognise that in the past we have not been as successful as we would have hoped in communicating with the profession. I am determined to rectify this, but it is a two-way process. While we will step up a gear in explaining how our programme of work will affect solicitors and support their work for clients, they in turn must engage with us, particularly in response to our consultations.

Let me illustrate my point by identifying a significant change ahead: making regulation more effective by increasing the focus on regulatory outcomes. This will involve rewriting the Code of Conduct to give greater emphasis to principles and to reduce the number of inflexible rules. This will have universal application and should come into effect towards the end of 2011. I urge every solicitor, whether practising in the high street, in public service, in-house, or in the major commercial practices, to keep in touch with this initiative and participate in the debate.

For our part, we need better technology to improve how we interact with solicitors. In relation to issues which impact on some areas of practice, but not all, we must focus our email newsletters and other communications on those directly affected to achieve a constructive and informed dialogue.

Again, let me make my point with examples: perhaps in the past we did not achieve a sufficiently effective engagement with the larger commercial firms – and the same can be said of their engagement with the SRA. Both sides have addressed the issue. The new board now includes City practitioners and the commercial firms are involved in our work on firm-based regulation.

Similarly, our engagement with black and minority ethnic practitioner groups used to be sporadic and unsatisfactory; work during 2009 has led to a regular and productive dialogue – focused communication in action.

Improving performanceAs Lord Hunt observed in his recent review of the regulation of legal services, the biggest question is whether and how the SRA can strike a more positive note and, in so doing, give a clear and inspirational vision of how a good legal firm should look, organise its affairs and conduct itself. The new board and I endorse that and will be judged by it.

We know that there are a number of areas where the SRA must enhance its performance, and we will address these. Most solicitors care deeply about professional standards – and it is with them that the SRA seeks to work in a supportive, business-like and informed manner.

We are also acutely aware of the economic pressures on solicitors. We will eliminate burdensome, expensive and time-consuming requirements that provide no real benefit or protection to consumers of legal services. We want to work with the profession to ensure that it is competitive and viable. Our objective is a regulatory climate that activates voluntary compliance rather than active intervention wherever possible.

We look forward to working constructively with the Law Society. It is questionable whether the profession at large was well served by some of the disagreements between the SRA and the Law Society in recent years. But that controversy must be put behind us. Such outstanding issues as remain can be resolved quickly and decisively with the goodwill and common sense which all concerned in the two bodies must now bring to bear.

In the challenges ahead, the SRA, in its role as independent regulator, must work collaboratively with the Law Society – such as engaging with the profession on the introduction of alternative business structures (on which you will hear from me a good deal in the coming months), aspects of financial protection and the creation of a fairer practising fee policy.

So let our dialogue begin. I hope that as many of you as possible will respond to our consultations and let us have your views, whether individually, through local law societies and special groups, or through the Law Society. Solicitors are privileged to be members of a great profession, whose core strengths include high standards of personal integrity, ethical belief and professionalism.

The maintenance of these values is, and will remain, central to all we do.

Charles Plant is chair of the board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority