Research package released concerning scope of regulation and desired consumer outcomes

17 March 2011

The LSB has today released a package of independent research commissioned to inform our work on rationalising the scope of legal services regulation. The details of this work were set out in our draft 2011/12 Business Plan.

This will help us to decide when, how and whether to use the mechanism, provided by the Legal Services Act 2007, to examine the appropriateness of the list of reserved legal activities. We expect to develop a set of criteria to help us identify the most appropriate form of regulation – which only at the extreme end will include reservation to specific types of lawyer.

The first piece of research is an analysis of the economic rationale for regulation by the independent researchers Professors Decker and Yarrow. This is accompanied by a series of essays responding to the points raised in the economic rationale by prominent legal and regulatory academics.

In addition, we have published a report by Opinion Leader into Consumer Outcomes. This sets out results from a series of focus groups and in-depth interviews where different types of consumers were asked what they expected from their interaction with their legal services provider. These findings were then reviewed by a number of expert commentators, including legal journalists, academics, regulators, representatives of professional bodies, individual and third sector users.

This research will inform a future LSB consultation paper on how best to rationalise the scope of regulation, due to be issued in early Summer 2011.