LSB's role must be 'confined,' Bar chairman says

Michael Todd QC, chairman of the Bar Council, has called for the LSB's role to be 'confined' to prevent it duplicating the role of other regulators. The move comes after the three first solicitor ABSs were licensed by the SRA last week.

Todd said 'the bulk of the original statutory objectives' of the LSB had been met.

'Proper regulation in the legal services sector, in the public interest, is absolutely vital, but needs to be balanced against both cost and existing resources and performed efficiency,' he said.

'It makes no sense, nor was it ever intended by parliament, for the LSB to duplicate the functions of the approved regulators. The role of the LSB must reflect that.'

In its response to the MoJ's triennial review of the LSB, the Bar Council argued that the BSB was an effective regulator and duplication would lead to increased cost and bureaucracy.

The Bar called on the government to ensure that the LSB did not interfere further in regulatory matters or education and training, unless the approved regulators acted unreasonably or expressly asked for it.

'The LSB is a relatively large organisation which has largely outlived its original purpose, and that is plainly seeking to find an additional role for itself,' the report said.

'Much of the undesirable activity of the LSB that this response has highlighted flows as much from this as it does from mission creep. Indeed, the very existence of this undesirable activity serves to prove our point that the LSB has served its purpose.'

The Bar Council said the LSB was never intended to be a professional regulator or a market regulator.

'It is inconsistent with the supervisory role entrusted to it by parliament that the LSB should concern itself with the 'micro-management' of the affairs of front-line regulators.'

The response revealed the Bar's frustration with the LSB's insistence that the BSB should have 'absolute autonomy' in staffing terms from the Bar Council and its involvement with internal rule changes, for example on public access.

It also reflected resentment with the LSB's role in the development of quality assurance for criminal advocates (QASA) and in the legal education and training review (LETR).

On LETR, the LSB was accused of making 'vague and threatening' statements and trying to carve out a 'front line role' for itself, which had no foundation in the Legal Services Act.

At best, the report predicted, it would duplicate the valuable work carried out by approved regulators, at worst it will 'complicate, lengthen and increase the cost of the LETR, to the detriment of the professions and the public'.