Solicitors will make up one-third of the members of the new overarching regulator of legal services, the Ministry of Justice has disclosed.

The new Legal Services Board was set up under the 2007 Legal Services Act to simplify regulation and ‘put the consumer first’.

The Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw, appointed the first nine members of the board last week who will take up their posts in September. Members include experts in consumer affairs, a former chief constable, and two barristers.

The solicitor members are: Rosemary Martin, admitted in 1985 and chief executive of the Practical Law Company, Michael Napier QC, a senior partner of Irwin Mitchell and the Attorney General’s pro bono envoy who was admitted in 1970, and Andrew Whittaker, admitted in 1980 and general counsel to the board of the Financial Services Authority.

The board will become fully operational in 2010. Its chair, appointed in April this year, is David Edmonds, a former civil servant and businessman.