The Legal Services Board has been effectively invisible to the legal professions since its creation by the Legal Services Act 2007. What positive difference for clients, solicitors or anyone else has the LSB made since its foundation? It’s time to abolish it.
So declared regulation and compliance specialist Paul Bennett in an article for the Gazette in March 2025 (‘Why it’s time to scrap the Legal Services Board’).
Bennett is hardly a lone voice. Axiom Ince, SSB and PM Law all happened on the LSB’s watch, after the board gave its principal charge the Solicitors Regulation Authority a gold star for efficacy.
This week’s scathing report of an independent review of the LSB will do nothing to restore confidence in the uber-watchdog. The LSB has ‘lost its way’ in recent years, said lead independent reviewer Richard Lloyd.
The chair of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority goes on to recommend that the Ministry of Justice carry out a comprehensive review of the regulation of legal services.
So how about it, Andy Burnham?
I still don’t see it. One very good reason for not abolishing the LSB as part of a broader regulatory shakeup is that it would require legislation. The deeply unloved LSA survives in part because of chronic political instability since the Brexit referendum a decade ago. There is no bandwidth amid the permacrisis. Will Labour’s latest saviour want to use valuable parliamentary time to unwind the hideously convoluted settlement prescribed therein?
Consider, too, the perspective of ministers on arms-length regulators. They love them. Government is never on the hook for casework, poor decisions and other miscellaneous screw-ups. The civil service doesn’t have to look after thousands of staff members. And the Treasury can make the regulated community pay for everything.
It doesn’t matter at all if the model is complex, a bit iffy at the margins or unnecessarily expensive. It doesn’t matter that the regulated community, academics, pressure groups and the like think the system is a bit bonkers. It is the insulation that matters.
Too cynical? The foot-dragging suggests otherwise. One could argue that Axiom Ince et al burned through some of that insulation (we shouldn’t forget Mazur, either). But most of it remains, at least for now.
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