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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”.

If, in a post outcomes-focused regulation world, all new firms have been given a clean bill of health by their regulator, there is a case for reopening the assigned risks pool to them because there might be other, less good reasons that they have not been able to obtain insurance, particularly if they are BME firms.

Uncertainty in how rules and regulations are interpreted is the very stuff of being a lawyer, but solicitors may well be less keen on this when the uncertain rules and regulations are the ones which govern how they operate. But as Solicitors Regulation Authority chief executive Antony Townsend admitted earlier this week, that is what outcomes-focused regulation will introduce to their world.

The Bar Standards Board has fired a warning shot across the bows of its solicitor counterpart, warning that “there will be instances where outcomes-based regulation is likely to be inadequate on its own, even if supplemented by guidance”.

The SRA has launched what it describes as its biggest-ever consultation exercise as it seeks to engage the profession over the introduction of outcomes-focused regulation and alternative business structures.