The Solicitor’s Handbook 2024

The Solicitor’s Handbook 2024 is the handbook for solicitors and legal practitioners. When Gregory Treverton Jones KC conceived the idea of a solicitor’s handbook in 2006, following a case that had gone surprisingly well for his client, who succeeded in a challenge to an intervention at first instance (normal service was resumed in the Court of Appeal!), little did he realise that he would be the author and maestro to 10 editions of The Solicitor’s Handbook, now published by The Law Society.

For generations of solicitors, The Guide to the Professional Conduct of Solicitors (first published as a slim volume in 1960 and given free to all practising solicitors), was the source of all knowledge in relation to the rules that controlled the profession. The last edition was in 1999, and with the advent of the Solicitors’ Code of Conduct 2007 and much else the gap needed to be filled. When Gregory Treverton Jones and the late Andrew Hopper QC brought out The Solicitor’s Handbook in 2008, Sir Anthony Clarke, Master of the Rolls, writing the Preface to the first edition, confidently predicted that the authors’ hopes of a new book to prove to be a valuable resource for regulator and regulated alike and contribute to good practice by identifying areas of particular concern and risk, would be fulfilled. Those hopes and that prediction have indeed been fulfilled with each successive edition.

The Solicitor’s Handbook remains a comprehensive and user-friendly guide to the common law and regulations governing the conduct of solicitors. The 2024 edition has been updated to take account of all key developments which have taken place since the publication of the last edition in 2022, and once again is a masterpiece. The book is divided into eight parts: Overview, the SRA Principles and Codes, other rules, the regulatory system in practice, the disciplinary system in practice, the regulation of alternative business structures, fraud and money laundering, and appendices. The chapters are clear, concise and remarkably informative. The new edition has 20 appendices giving the reader the relevant rules and regulations at his or her fingertips. In all the book runs to over 800 pages, and in it you will find everything you want. The law is stated as at 20 December 2023 but also incorporates some SRA and SDT policy changes which postdate that.

The authors Gregory Treverton Jones KC (General Editor), Nigel West, Susanna Heley and Robert Forman have substantially rewritten the chapters on the Code for Individuals and the Code for Firms, combining them into one chapter, and dealing with the contents of the Codes as subject-matter rather than by rule numbers. They have added a new chapter dealing with economic crime, have included revisions to the SRA’s powers of investigation and the Legal Ombudsman Scheme Rules, and have also incorporated the dramatic increase in written guidance from the SRA in recent years. Over the last two years, there has been increasing concentration by the SRA upon matters which fall outside the solicitor-client relationship. Sexual misconduct, toxic workplaces, and inappropriate use of social media by solicitors have all led to sanctions being imposed by the SDT. The SRA is not alone in this and we have seen similar updated guidance from other professional bodies including the Bar Standards Board, the General Medical Council and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

This is to be last edition of The Solicitor’s Handbook with which Gregory Treverton Jones KC will be associated. He says that when Andrew Hopper QC and he embarked in 2006 on the project of replacing The Guide to the Professional Conduct of Solicitors, they did not foresee the tremendous growth in regulatory law and practice that has occurred in the 17 years since. As he tells me, he and Andrew Hopper contributed on seven editions with many laughs and much red wine. Gregory Treverton Jones went on to write the 2019, 2022 and 2024 editions with three new solicitors named on the cover. The profession is indebted to him and with Nigel West, Susanna Heley and Robert Forman the Solicitor’s Handbook remains in good and skilled hands. I have no doubt that like Sir Anthony Clarke’s prediction at the time of the first edition, The Solicitor’s Handbook will continue to go from strength to strength.

KENNETH HAMER

Henderson Chambers

The Solicitor’s Handbook 2024 is out now and can be purchased from the Law Society Bookshop

https://bookshop.lawsociety.org.uk/p/the-solicitors-handbook-2024-paperback/