Phillips: Sector needs to works together
Encouraging lawyers to embed client vulnerability into the design of their services is set to be a new Legal Services Board (LSB) project next year, it said yesterday.
The oversight regulator’s draft business plan for 2023/24 also proposed increasing its budget by a below-inflation 9.1%, representing a further £2.11 per practising lawyer.
It marks the conclusion of the first three-year strategic cycle within the LSB’s broader 10-year vision published last year.
A consultation on the plan said existing workstreams that would continue into next year included ensuring the different frontline regulators’ disciplinary processes are more aligned, ensuring financial protections support consumers and lawyers as the professional indemnity insurance market hardens, reviewing how lawyers deal with complaints, and “establishing how regulation can best support the rule of law and high standards of professional ethics in the legal services sector”.
The LSB’s first-principles analysis of the reserved legal activities will be completed by April, while a single digital register of all regulated lawyers should come closer to fruition.
Among the new areas of work will be building on research the LSB published earlier this year on the experiences of vulnerable clients.
The draft plan said: “We want to undertake further work to understand the needs of, and how to best support, vulnerable consumers. The cost-of-living crisis makes it even more pertinent for us to build on the findings of the research.
“We will build our understanding of both regulators and providers’ current arrangements to support consumers in vulnerable circumstances and look to best practice beyond the sector.
“We then intend to develop a set of high-level principles focusing on the importance of inclusive design that ensures everyone with a legal need can access services”.
The LSB said it wanted to do this through “light-touch collaboration with the regulators”.
It also wanted to improve its “market surveillance and horizon scanning” to help anticipate and respond to risks across the sector.
“Climate change and the cost-of-living crisis, and their consequent impacts on the legal services sector and consumers, are two examples of areas where we will seek intelligence to inform our regulatory approach, ensuring we remain on the front foot in these important areas.”
The proposed budget for 2023/24 is £4.7m, an increase of £392,000 on the current year which the LSB said was actually £84,000 less than 2022/23 when adjusted for inflation. It would add £2.11 onto the practising fees paid by authorised persons.
“Our proposed budget reflects our efforts to keep the resources we need to meet the scale of the challenges facing the legal sector, as identified in the State of Legal Services 2020 report to an absolute minimum.
“At a time when legal need is likely to grow given the economic challenges in wider society, it remains vital that we ensure consumers and the public can secure fairer outcomes, stronger confidence and better services.”
Staff costs are by far the single largest part of the LSB’s budget and will go up by 1% to £2.9m for 35.3 full-time equivalents.
LSB chair Dr Helen Phillips said: “Next year we will continue making progress on our ambition to reshape legal services.
“The world is a different place now to what it was when we developed our strategy only two years ago, and it is more important than ever that the sector works together to deliver fairer outcomes, stronger confidence, and better services for consumers.”
The consultation closes on 3 February ahead of the final business plan being published by the end of March. A new LSB chair should be in place for the start of the 2023/24 year.
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