Our beloved regulator never tires of lecturing solicitors and law firms on matters of transparency, but perhaps sometimes it could attend to the beam in its own eye. Such as when pulling a significant policy U-turn, for example.

In April, the Solicitors Regulation Authority board, at its regular meeting, made a decision of huge interest to the profession it regulates. This was to drop a plan to impose a £500,000 limit on individual claims to the Compensation Fund. The decision was made after super-regulator the Legal Services Board read the riot act about ‘detriment to clients’.

You might have thought that the SRA would announce such a significant change to the profession that pays its wages. But no, it appears in the small print at the bottom of page two of the minutes, posted on the SRA’s website a month after the meeting. Beneath an item about ‘Minor amendments to the SQE Assessment Regulations’. And a sign reading ‘Beware of the Leopard’. (We made the last one up.)

A couple of years back, when the SRA decided to bar journalists from its regular board meetings, part of the deal was a promise to brief the press on what went on. If it can’t manage that, Obiter would like press access to the meetings reinstated, immediately.

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