After looking at the issue of access to justice, the focus turns to those responsible for securing justice on behalf of their clients.
Regulation of the legal profession must be done appropriately and proportionately. To maintain some measure of independence from the government, the legal professions in England and Wales have been self-policing to a certain extent (Part II) – more so when it comes to the control of the conduct of members rather than standards of service.
Given Wales only has ~3.2million people, the regulatory framework can be simplified. We don’t need so many overlapping agencies and bodies – but the professions themselves may want to remain apart from each other.
Maintain separate role-specific regulatory bodies – This is how things are done now. The Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) and Law Society would carry on for solicitors (possibly with nothing more than a name change), while the Bar Standards Board and Bar Council would continue for barristers – with the likes of CILEX for legal executives.
Combine the existing representative and regulatory bodies – The Law Society would merge with the Solicitors Regulatory Authority to represent solicitors, while
the Bar Council and Bar Standards Board would merge to form a single representative and regulatory body for barristers.
A single regulatory body for all legal professionals – As above, except the body would regulate and represent all legal professionals, possible as a Law Society (as happens in some jurisdictions like the Isle of Man). This would streamline the process and perhaps be more efficient.
Extending the Legal Ombudsman’s investigative powers – The Legal Ombudsman is currently responsible for investigating complaints regarding the standard of service provided by the legal profession. They could take on the regulatory and conduct-related investigations too at a Welsh level. The number of complaints investigated each year in Wales is likely to be relatively small in number.
Leave regulatory matters to an expanded Law Council – Again, this would streamline the process and reduce the number of organisations to a more manageable level for a country of Wales’ size. I go into more detail on that next.
