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I do a lot of defended debt recovery work and I feed from a team who send LBAs or issue short form proceedings. The rigidity of the debt recovery rules means the tailor-made services debt co solicitors provide to clients, which is based on the type of debt, age of debt, volume of instructions, quality of data transmission between client and lawyer etc etc etc is not looking possible. This is a step backwards because price varies greatly depending on the type of client and type of debt. This kind of rigid set of rules sacrifices innovation for an obsession with transparency because these rules don't allow clients to trade freely with their lawyers. They don't help, they hinder. "Sorry we can't do you that deal for that volume of instructions because it's too different to our client X or it doesn't match what we currently have on our site. We'd love to do what you want to do, and we know we would be acting in your best interests if we contracted on those terms, but we can't because we don't want to get into any bother." I mean where do you start when you already have hundreds of clients on different deals for perfectly legitimate different reasons. A single one size fits all pricing structure could kill off future revenue and create problems with existing clients. All it does is ignite a desperate race to the bottom. The top and bottom of this is that businesses who are trying to recover their money will make less of a net return on their recoveries because thinking outside the box to make the best possible recovery for a client will become too risky an option for lawyers. For the sake of the few businesses who have had a bad experience (which will always exist) the many will lose the range of available options open to them and that means we won't be able to always act in our client's best interests. The SRA needs to understand that you might be able to paint conveyancing or probate by numbers because they might be more static but you cannot paint debt recovery by numbers. There are just too many shades that make up the painting! I urge them to have a rethink about this one.