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The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and Office of Fair Trading (OFT) have each pledged around £30,000 to support the Legal Services Board’s (LSB) research into the will-writing market, Legal Futures can reveal. However, the Law Society has declined to contribute, citing concerns over the impact its involvement could have on how the impartiality of the research is viewed.

During my 12 years working on the Law Society Gazette, one got used to certain clichés. The plastic wrapper would come up a lot, but more than anything people would say how their favourite section was the one detailing solicitors being struck off – it was the same for me as a reader while a trainee solicitor. I felt strangely proud a few months back after recognising three people in one edition of the Gazette’s Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal reports.

The chairman of the Legal Services Board has called on the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to be more flexible in its approach to law firms which are looking to do deals with external investors before alternative business structures (ABSs) become a reality on 6 October 2011. In a major speech, David Edmonds also suggested that the rules which prevent solicitors having unregulated separate businesses carrying out unreserved legal work are anti-competitive.

The updated draft of the single Handbook that will govern both traditional law firms and alternative business structures from October 2011 is being unveiled today by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). This is the last opportunity to comment on it. The latest stage in the SRA’s move to outcomes-focused regulation also includes a call for the Legal Services Board to extend the definition of reserved legal activities to cover all “solicitor activities”.

The Law Society is to enlarge the board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority so as to introduce parity between the number of solicitor and lay members in a deal struck with the Legal Services Board. It follows a similar agreement between the LSB and Bar Standards Board, whose offer to introduce parity on the road to a lay majority has been accepted.