header-logo header-logo

Regulation beyond the echo chambers: who is listening?

09 July 2020 / Jessica Clay , Lucy Williams
Issue: 7894 / Categories: Opinion , Profession , Regulatory
printer mail-detail
23827
Jessica Clay & Lucy Williams, of Kingsley Napley, examine the potential for lasting legal services reform, in the light of Professor Mayson’s report

  • Legal services framework reform: exploring realistic and immediate options.
  • A ‘make-do’ situation: small steps towards change.

Now submitted to the Lord Chancellor, Professor Stephen Mayson’s report, ‘Reforming Legal Services: Regulation beyond the echo chambers’ is the culmination of a two-year independent review into the regulation of legal services in England and Wales. Mayson consulted almost 350 interested parties and sought insight from individuals on an Advisory Panel, including our colleague Iain Miller.

Mayson refers to the current regulatory framework as ‘incomplete’ and ‘limited’ and ‘not able in the near-term and beyond to meet the demands and expectations placed on it’, particularly with the emergence and rapid development of alternative providers and lawtech. Mayson sets out 46 long-term recommendations, which seek to create a ‘level playing field’ for legal services and enhance consumer protection, through ‘targeted and proportionate regulation’.

These recommendations

If you are not a subscriber, subscribe now to read this content
If you are already a subscriber sign in
...or Register for two weeks' free access to subscriber content

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Muckle LLP—Ella Johnson

Muckle LLP—Ella Johnson

Real estate dispute resolution team welcomes newly qualified solicitor

Morr & Co—Dennis Phillips

Morr & Co—Dennis Phillips

International private client team appoints expert in Spanish law

NLJ Career Profile: Stefan Borson, McCarthy Denning

NLJ Career Profile: Stefan Borson, McCarthy Denning

Stefan Borson, football finance expert head of sport at McCarthy Denning, discusses returning to the law digging into the stories behind the scenes

NEWS
Cryptocurrency is reshaping financial remedy cases, warns Robert Webster of Maguire Family Law in NLJ this week. Digital assets—concealable, volatile and hard to trace—are fuelling suspicions of hidden wealth, yet Form E still lacks a section for crypto-disclosure
NLJ columnist Stephen Gold surveys a flurry of procedural reforms in his latest 'Civil way' column
Paper cyber-incident plans are useless once ransomware strikes, argues Jack Morris of Epiq in NLJ this week
In this week's NLJ, Robert Hargreaves and Lily Johnston of York St John University examine the Employment Rights Bill 2024–25, which abolishes the two-year qualifying period for unfair-dismissal claims
Writing in NLJ this week, Manvir Kaur Grewal of Corker Binning analyses the collapse of R v Óg Ó hAnnaidh, where a terrorism charge failed because prosecutors lacked statutory consent. The case, she argues, highlights how procedural safeguards—time limits, consent requirements and institutional checks—define lawful state power
back-to-top-scroll