Legal Services Board responds to latest Consumer Panel findings


Responding to the latest Tracker Survey results from the Legal Services Consumer Panel, Dr Helen Phillips, Chair of the LSB, said:

“We are committed to ensuring access to justice for all. Clearly, there continues to be a need to ensure better information is available for consumers in relation to price, quality, redress and regulation. This is vital to increasing competition in the legal services market place and to helping people make better informed choices. We will continue to monitor the actions being taken by regulators to improve transparency for consumers.

“Technology is playing a greater role in the delivery of services to consumers and this will grow in the coming years, so we are looking at how we help regulators develop their approaches to regulating the use of technology. Promoting responsible technological innovation that earns the public’s trust will help to widen access to services and improve customer satisfaction.”

– ENDS

As part of the LSB’s ongoing project on developing approaches to regulation of technology in legal services, it has launched a series of podcasts and research papers designed to assist regulators and providers in responding to the ethical and regulatory challenges presented by disruptive technologies.

In podcast one, legal services consultant Alison Hook discusses her paper on the lessons to be learned from abroad and compares the different responses to technology by regulators internationally. Podcast two sees King’s College London’s Professor Roger Brownsword discuss his paper which looks at what legal services regulators might learn from UK financial services and medical device regulators.

http://legalservicesboard.org.uk/our-work/current-work/technology-and-regulation

 

For further information, please email paul.nezandonyi@legalservicesboard.org.uk or call on 020 7271 0068.

  1. The Act created the LSB as a new regulator with responsibility for overseeing the regulation of legal services in England and Wales. The new regulatory regime became active on 1 January 2010.
  2. The LSB oversees ten approved regulators, which in turn regulate individual legal practitioners. The approved regulators, designated under Part 1 of Schedule 4 of the 2007 Act, are the Law Society, the Bar Council, the Master of the Faculties, the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives, the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, the Chartered Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys, the Association of Costs Lawyers, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. In addition, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland is an approved regulator for probate activities only but does not currently authorise anyone to offer this service.
  3. As of 1 April 2018, the legal profession in England and Wales comprised 146,600 solicitors, 16,600 barristers, 7,600 chartered legal executives and 6,000 other individuals operating in other areas of the legal profession such as conveyancing (figures rounded to the closest hundred). The UK legal sector turnover was £33 billion per annum (2017) which is up 19% in cash terms since 2012.

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