The freshly-branded Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) publicly flexed its growing muscles last week at a high-profile event in the heart of the Westminster Village, The Atrium at Millbank. Both SRA board chairman Peter Williamson and the authority's chief executive, Antony Townsend, ensured that the audience of legal profession luminaries (including the Lord Chancellor and Sir David Clementi) was in no doubt that they see independence from the Law Society as the organisation's core principle. Indeed, Mr Townsend described the relationship as one of 'being good neighbours in semi-detached properties', although he acknowledged that there is plenty of opportunity for spats over loud music, and the 'chucking of referral fee guidance back and forth over the garden fence'. At its heart, however, the SRA, said Mr Townsend, must be 'firmly and fiercely independent'.


Chancery Lane might well welcome that separation when events surrounding the SRA's brand launch are taken into account. Mr Townsend related the story of the final hours before the new image was unveiled. SRA staff conducted last-minute checks on the organisation's initials for website address purposes and were slightly bemused (or should that be horrified?) on finding that the main Internet search return produced an outfit known as the Sexual Reform Association. According to Mr Townsend, that SRA deals with those poor unfortunates &150; reportedly such as US actor Michael Douglas &150; who are or have been addicted to sex. It should be pointed out that Mr Douglas has denied that he is so addicted. However, Obiter's own research was unable to produce that potentially confusing rival to the SRA. Nonetheless, a five-minute Google session did throw up the Student Radio Association and the Skiff Racing Association. Still the sexual reform allusion did allow Mr Townsend a joke, as he suggested his staff, committed to acting in a more transparent way than in the past, were tempted to invoke the catchline: 'Welcome to the SRA &150; we do it in public.'