How will the SRA apply ‘principles-based regulation’ to legal services?
Thursday 17 December 2009 ‘Principles-based regulation means moving away from reliance on detailed prescriptive rules and relying more on high-level principles to set the standards by which regulated firms must conduct business.’ So said Lord Hunt in his report on legal services regulation, which advocated such a switch. The potential benefits to practitioners are greater flexibility and easier compliance. But the SRA’s aim to introduce a revised regime by 2011 appears ambitious – and not least because the regulator will be sailing into the wind. ‘Principles-based regulation’ has not had a good press of late. It is now commonly taken to mean ‘light-touch’ regulation that turns the regulated into clients of the regulator. Indeed, the landmark Wigley report into the financial crisis recommended that the City should foot the bill for a new, more intense supervisory regime that would replace ‘principles-based’ regulation. Lord Hunt argued that ‘principles-based regulation’ was not in fact
