SRA's name and shame policy "will help no one"

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA’s) “naming and shaming” policy will drive up costs and sour the regulator’s relationship with practitioners, lawyers say.

It is understood that the SRA will start publishing misconduct information on its website within months, although the policy only applies to investigations started after 1 January 2008.

Graham Reid, an employed barrister with Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP, says the policy will increase the scope, and therefore the volume, of published instances of solicitors’ misconduct as much as 17-fold.
Until now, only the most serious examples of solicitors’ misconduct were reported in the Law Society’s Gazette and website. This will be extended to minor “internal” reprimands and rebukes administered by the SRA, decisions to prosecute at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and the imposition of practising certificate conditions.

Reid says: “Many solicitors will be so alarmed at the prospect of personalised adverse publicity that they will be much more aggressive in their responses to an investigation by the SRA. Appeals from adjudication decisions will be more likely. Costs will rise.

“What clients need is relevant information about the overall quality of performance of solicitors and firms, not a catalogue of minor misconduct offences. As for solicitors, the risk of publication will introduce further and harmful antagonism into their relationship with the SRA. This policy is unlikely to help anyone.”

Reid adds that the routine publication of misconduct offences will not allow the public to distinguish between matters that are truly embarrassing for the firm and those that are not. “The signal will be lost in the noise,” he says.
Antony Townsend, SRA chief executive, says consumers have a right to know about the regulatory records of solicitors who have broken the rules. “This policy should enhance our relationship with solicitors, who will be able to see that we regulate proportionately. The fact that little information about solicitors in trouble has been published in the past is hardly an argument for not making the information available in the future,” he adds.