Small firms: developing
your business
Robert Loughlin
Rachel Lewis
The legal services sector UK
• 370,000 employed in legal services
• 62% solicitors or employed in solicitor firms
• £25.7 billion value of legal services
Small Firms
• 26,000 solicitors
• 48% of law firms (using our definition of 0-4 partners and
turnover of less than £400,000)
Changing legal market…
How can we help?
•
•
•
•
•
A strong and effective Regulator – striking the right balance
Understand the pressures that small firms are under
Take a proportionate approach
Remove prescription & red tape to enable innovation & growth
Be flexible – change the regulatory approach as the market
changes
• Make it easier for you to deal with us
What are we doing to help?
Changes to our handbook
Training
for
Tomorrow
Open
data
SRA
Innovate
Review of
consumer
protection
Regulatory
reform
programme
Fees
review
Looking
to the
Future
Question
of Trust
Improving our operation
8
Improving our operation
SRA Innovate
Growing your business
How can we help?
•
•
•
•
Pre-application meetings
Regulatory reform
SRA Innovate
Risk Outlook
Contact us
[email protected]
Dedicated support available today
What support is available?
Ethics helpline
Dedicated small firms team
Cybercrime
Small firms virtual reference group
Changes to accounts rules
Types of issues to avoid
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Failure to deal with the destruction of files properly
Disorderly wind down of firm
Accounts rules breaches
Failure to deal with residual balances
Failure to comply with undertakings
Misleading clients and third parties
Not reporting material breaches to the SRA
IT security issues
Sudden departure of partner
Risk based proportionate approach
In the last 12 months Supervision have considered
4,880 conduct matters. Resulting in:
Thank you…
What more can we do
to help?