Posted by Dave Seager, consulting adviser to Legal Futures Associate SIFA Professional
Seager: Financial advisers can help law firms
Only a few short weeks ago, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) published its second annual assessment of continuing competence. This leaves lawyers and certainly compliance officers for legal practice (COLPs) in little doubt that the regulatory spotlight is still firmly on whether skills and knowledge are being maintained.
For the SRA, under pressure from the Legal Services Board, it is all about ensuring the quality of legal services and the confidence and trust of the consumer in the profession, which I assume we all want.
It is also clear that it is not just about individual lawyers identifying their own needs and maintaining knowledge, but also about the firm providing supervision and guidance to them.
The assessment for 2024 is derived from consumer reports to the SRA, which sadly increased over 1,000 to 11,174 over the year, findings from its thematic reviews and training record reviews, as well as feedback from stakeholders and representative bodies.
Whilst in many areas the report found improvements on 2023, in areas such as conveyancing and immigration, there were other areas where there were more complaints and therefore concern.
The SRA observed: “Using this data, and information from our wider work, we identified family and landlord and tenant law as areas where we want to explore in more detail if and how solicitors practising in these areas are maintaining their competence.”
In fact, reports relating to family law were up 25% on the previous year, which can only be seen as alarming.
Interestingly the SRA also identified wider challenges that some solicitors are facing to meet their obligation to maintain confidence. “This included some solicitors only focusing their learning and development on maintaining technical legal knowledge,” it said.
The regulator has left little doubt over just how seriously it is taking this issue and the report details numerous ways in which it will be monitoring the profession. This will include checks on how firms, primarily COLPs, are organising training for their teams and supervising their competence.
For individuals, the SRA will be reviewing training records to check whether solicitors are conducting learning and development, how they are doing so and whether they are demonstrating their requirement to be regularly reflecting on their learning and development needs.
There will also be running spot checks made after solicitors renew their practising certificates.
In short, firms and individuals need to be taking this very seriously and placing ongoing competency at the core of their plans.
From a SIFA Professional perspective, we are convinced that we and our member financial planning firms can help, particularly given the focus on family law, where errors can have devastating consequences for clients.
The regulator also, correctly in our view, observed that “consumers accessing such services are often more vulnerable because the legal issues involved can be complex, emotional and highly stressful”.
SIFA Professional financial planning firms will quite often have the appropriate qualifications and experience to deal with family matters, including separation and divorce, from the financial perspective.
The financial planning community, and not just due to recent regulatory pressure, has for some time taken working with and supporting clients in vulnerable circumstances extremely seriously. As such, financial planning firms have longstanding polices in place for dealing with such clients, along with teams that are comfortable and confident to that end.
The SRA has noted that it is often ongoing competence in the areas complementing direct legal advice that gets overlooked and it is here that your financial planning colleagues can assist.
Whether it be how to use cash-flow forecasting alongside divorce, how to identify and mould your support for clients in vulnerable circumstances, or perhaps more simply how financial planning can and should work alongside your legal services, the financial planning community is on hand and well equipped to support you and your clients.
We would suggest that you reach out to your financial planning partners, who will be keen to assist not only with identifying learning and development needs in the non-legal aspects in this area, but also acting as a training partner.
If your partner is a SIFA Professional member, they will be able to invite you to complementary monthly training webcasts, across all the areas and not just family, where legal and financial overlap.
This is just another obvious area where closer collaboration between the legal services and financial planning communities can benefit not only mutual clients but you and your firms as well.
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