When a report of potential misconduct reaches the Solicitors Regulation Authority, something of consequence has occurred. A concern has been raised about a professional whose entire utility to the public rests upon trust, and the regulator must be free to examine that concern with rigour. But one question ought to stand at the head of every file from the day it is opened: is this an exercise in establishing what happened, or a search for material to vindicate a suspicion already formed? The two are not the same, and the difference is the whole of the matter.
The distinction grows more pressing as the regulatory burden mounts. In May 2026 the SRA reported that, in the six months to the end of April, it had reviewed 8,955 reports of potential misconduct, 58% more than in the same period two years earlier, and had referred 1,322 of them for formal investigation, a rise of 41%; as at 30 April it had live investigations connected to 1,844 reports. These are striking figures, and they were published in the same month as the regulator’s consultation on a 29% increase in its funding. But they are figures for reports and referrals, not for findings. The SRA itself acknowledges that several reports may concern a single matter, firm or individual. No reader should take them as 8,955, or 1,322, or even 1,844 solicitors against whom anything has been established. The language in which the profession, the press and the regulator describe those numbers ought to honour that distinction, because loose language about allegations is the first step towards treating them as proof.
I have practised in professional discipline since 1996 and have been engaged in more than 1,500 regulatory and disciplinary matters. For 20 years I prosecuted on behalf of the Solicitors Regulation Authority and its predecessors, latterly I have defended solicitors. Having stood on both sides of the room, I am persuaded that robust regulation and robust defence are not competing public interests but complementary ones. A finding that has survived proper challenge commands confidence. A finding that has not is merely an assertion with a seal upon it.
The point has acquired a sharper edge since the Legal Services Board’s independent review of the regulator’s handling of Axiom Ince, which concluded that the SRA had not acted adequately, effectively or efficiently and had missed repeated opportunities to prevent the loss of some £64m from client account. That episode is sometimes invoked as an argument for a harder regulatory hand. It is better understood as an argument for a more disciplined one. Fairness and rigour are not opposites; they are the same quality, viewed from different sides. A regulator that is slow to act on clear evidence and quick to act on none has failed in both directions, and for the same underlying reason: it has not done the work of testing what it knows.
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None of this is of much comfort to the solicitor who receives the first letter and feels, with some justification, that the reputational injury begins the moment the envelope is opened. It is worth remembering that the letter opens an enquiry; it does not serve a charge. It deserves a careful answer, not a panicked one. The temptation is to respond at once, at length, and with indignation: a narrative of the whole matter and a forceful denial that the complaint has any merit. I have read many such responses. Few have helped their authors. Indignation is not evidence, and a regulator confronted with heat rather than light will tend to conclude that there is something to find. The better course is a disciplined account that answers four questions: what precisely is alleged; which rule or principle is said to be engaged; which documents exist and where they are; and what, candidly, remains uncertain. A response framed in those terms does the regulator’s work for it, and in doing so shapes the inquiry rather than merely reacting to it.
The profession must also resist a false dichotomy between cooperation and challenge. Solicitors are bound to engage with their regulator, to answer accurately and promptly, and to do nothing that obstructs a legitimate enquiry; those duties are not in doubt. But cooperation has never required assent to every inference drawn from a document, nor acceptance of every characterisation advanced by a complainant. A courteous request that an allegation be particularised, a reasoned explanation of a decision taken under pressure, or a properly founded objection to an unfair process are not acts of obstruction. They are contributions to the quality of the investigation, and a regulator confident in its own case should welcome them.
For firms, the position is often more complicated than a single allegation suggests. The interests and obligations of the practice are not necessarily those of the solicitor under investigation. A firm may need to secure client files, consider whether its own reporting obligations under the code are engaged, and protect matters that must continue regardless of the inquiry. The individual may need, and is entitled to, independent advice. Both are regulated persons; both owe duties of candour; but they do not always face in the same direction. To treat their interests as automatically interchangeable, whether out of loyalty or convenience, is capable of harming both the investigation and the defence.
There is a further hazard in approaching an investigation as if it admitted of only two outcomes: complete vindication or professional disgrace. The reality is rarely so binary. An error may warrant correction without any taint of dishonesty. A systems failure may expose responsibilities far wider than those of the fee-earner whose name appears on the file. Conversely, a genuine breach is not diminished by an elaborate denial, and a tribunal will usually see through one. Sound regulation depends upon distinguishing among these possibilities rather than collapsing them into a single label, and the profession should hold its regulator to that standard precisely because the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal now decides on the civil standard. When findings turn on the balance of probabilities, the quality of the evidence that reaches the tribunal, and of the process that produced it, is not a procedural nicety. It is the only safeguard there is.
Procedural fairness is sometimes described as a protection for the regulated person. It is that, but it is equally a protection for the public. Decisions founded on tested evidence are more defensible and more durable. Proportionate enquiries, of the kind the SRA’s own Enforcement Strategy promises, make better use of finite resources, a consideration the regulator can hardly dismiss while pleading that its resources are overstretched. Clear reasons allow firms and individuals to understand what must change, which is the whole purpose of the exercise. None of these benefits requires a softer approach to serious misconduct. They require a more exacting one.
The SRA is entitled, and obliged, to investigate where the circumstances warrant it. Solicitors are equally entitled to have allegations examined fairly and conclusions drawn from evidence rather than assumption. These propositions do not compete; a mature profession, and a mature regulator, should be capable of holding both at once.
The strongest defence is not a refusal to engage with regulation. It is a careful, candid and properly evidenced response that helps to separate what is alleged from what is proved. And the strength of a regulatory system is to be measured not only by the misconduct it identifies, but by the fairness with which it reaches its conclusions. On that measure, the profession and its regulator have the same interest, and they would do well to remember it.
Jonathan Goodwin is a solicitor advocate specialising in regulatory and disciplinary proceedings. He is the author of Defending Solicitors
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