For lovers of reviews of legal regulation, these are truly glorious days. With the Legal Services Board (LSB) today kicking off its review of the independence of the profession’s regulatory bodies, we now have our sixth review of regulation either recently finished or ongoing (this doesn’t include the barrage of consultations issued by the Bar Council and Bar Standards Board which are surely too much to ask even the most dedicated scribe to keep up with).
Who would have thought the subject, widely ignored despite constant grumbling from most sections of the profession and public for years, would become so popular. And the Road to Damascus award for new-found enthusiasm for debating reform goes to the Law Society. This is a body that gave the issue such priority, it took more than five years to update its own code of conduct, and yet has been responsible for commissioning not one but two of the reviews (by Nicholas Smedley and Lord Hunt).
