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The Solicitors Regulation Authority has “substantial work” to do before it can consider its performance satisfactory, including making its rules less prescriptive, the Legal Services Board said today.

Barristers should soon be free to give their personal opinions on cases when the rule restricting them to voicing only clients’ views is finally lifted – four years after the change was first mooted. Their regulator said lifting the same ban on solicitors had not caused a problem.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has rejected a demand by the Legal Services Board that it start a review of the separate business rule, saying it can see “very little public interest justification” for doing so.

It’s not like the Legal Services Board (LSB) to spring a surprise, but its announcement last week that it was not going to recommend that estate administration become a reserved legal activity – while pushing ahead with will-writing – certainly was one. My initial reaction, along with many of those reported on Legal Futures last week, was one of bafflement. Surely of the three elements of the process – will writing, probate and estate administration – it is the latter where the highest risk of fraud occurs and thus where regulation is most needed. Instead the first two will be. I understand that it was a real knife-edge decision by the LSB, and on reflection I think I agree with it.

The Legal Services Board (LSB) will today formally recommend to the Lord Chancellor that will-writing – but not estate administration – should be regulated legal work. The LSB had initially intended to include estate administration.