A regulator cannot expect to be liked. Perhaps the best it can hope for is to be grudgingly respected. To that end the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s bold shift to outcome-focused and entity-based regulation has to be welcomed by solicitors.

Over three-quarters of firms reckon the regulatory burden imposed on them by the SRA is excessive – though they concede that effective regulation is imperative. And now the SRA is doing something about it, launching its biggest-ever consultation on reforms that will see the Code of Conduct rewritten and a swath of detailed conduct rules scrapped. We encourage you to have your say at one of the roadshows the SRA has organised for the next few weeks.

SRA board chair Charles Plant is keen to drive home the message that principles-based regulation need not – indeed must not – mean ‘regulation-lite’. And it’s true that the regulator’s direction of travel appears counterintuitive; look at what ‘principles-based’ regulation led to in the financial services sector.

But he’s right nevertheless. The US, for example, has long had a highly prescriptive ‘cookbook’ approach to regulation of professional services (in financial reporting, most notoriously). A fat lot of good that did (Enron, anyone?). What matters is how effectively principles are applied, and the professionalism and ethical rigour of those who apply them. Solicitors will have to uphold their side of the bargain.