There are not many weeks when more than one important development has taken place affecting lawyers.
It is tempting to write about the role of lawyers in the political earthquake which has just taken place in the US – how those law firms which were foolish enough to bend the knee to President Trump look more exposed and mistaken now, how the many attempts by the Trump administration to undermine trust in the mid-term elections were foiled by lawyers (and others) ready to go to court to protect voting rights, and so on.
But it is our local issue which wins out: that is, the Ministry of Justice’s response to the Legal Services Board Independent Public Bodies Review. The review of the LSB was commissioned by the government in February 2026; it reported in July 2026; and here we are in November 2026 with the government’s response.
There was a lot of detail in the July report about how the LSB could improve its performance, but the most striking recommendation was that the government should carry out a comprehensive review of the regulation of legal services by 2029. And the government has accepted that, with some fudging around the time-line.
To the surprise of absolutely no-one with experience of our regulatory structure, the government has agreed to carry out a comprehensive review ‘to consider whether it remains fit for purpose in a changing legal services market’. The mere raising of a question about its fitness reflects the widespread view of its unfitness.
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It is interesting to note the wording of the review process ahead:
‘The government will work closely with consumers, regulators and other key stakeholders in the legal sector to consider, among other things, the regulatory boundaries, the structure and complexity of the system, and the implications of developments such as AI and lawtech.’
The legal profession – the very community to be regulated – is not mentioned by name. We must assume that lawyers are included within the phrase of ‘Consumers, regulators and other key stakeholders’ with whom the government will work, where we are reduced to mere stakeholders within our own regulation. Our not being specifically named makes me fear that the mistakes of the past will be repeated. I mean by that that the views of those with the least experience of the realities of legal practice, including our regulators which have mandated lay majorities, will be given the greatest weight. There is a good argument for saying that that is one of the reasons why we have ended up where we are.
The ‘structure and complexity’ of the system also appear in the list. There is a further interesting omission in the wording – the word ‘accountable’. It is precisely the lack of accountability in the present system which is another driver towards the present mess. Yes, the lay majority SRA is accountable on paper to the lay majority LSB, and the lay majority LSB has appeared to be accountable to no-one – until now. Only once the disasters began to happen and the losses mounted in the tens of millions did the LSB belatedly discover its role – so belatedly that the government has finally realised that the structure and complexity need to be comprehensively reviewed. But, essentially, the community being regulated has been held responsible for the disastrous mistakes of the regulators, without the necessary accountability to ensure that such grave mistakes could not happen, or at least not more than once.
The only body which is accountable to solicitors in the whole set-up is the Law Society, which has been tied up so tightly by the LSB in Internal Governance Rules that it can say and do very little about what is done to its members by the regulators. This kind of skewed accountability must be avoided in the new structure, even though not mentioned by the government now.
Finally, I worry that this is seen as a structural problem alone. Yes, the structure does need a radical overhaul. But there are other factors at play.
First, the rule-book – the solicitors’ code of conduct – may permit behaviours which can only be regulated once a disaster has occurred. That is not a good system, and so a review of the rule-book is an essential part of the review of our regulation, to ensure that the structure finally chosen is properly able to regulate.
Second, the review talks about AI and lawtech. That is of course an essential part of the review, but probably the most important parts of the regulation of AI and lawtech lie beyond the powers of the legal profession’s regulator, in terms of national security, access to data, and liability.
There is a lot to talk about in the comprehensive review, but the initial language from the government is not promising regarding the extent to which it will give weight to the views of the regulated community itself.
Jonathan Goldsmith is Law Society Council member for EU & International, chair of the Law Society’s Policy & Regulatory Affairs Committee and a member of its board. All views expressed are personal and are not made in his capacity as a Law Society Council member, nor on behalf of the Law Society
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