In this podcast Paul Parker provides an overview of the “StaRs”, the enforcement regime and their perceived flexibility, and examines the SRA’s reach into one’s private life and personal affairs.
A radical re-write of the code of conduct applicable to all persons in practice as solicitors, registered European lawyers and registered foreign lawyers came into force on 25 November 2019. With one stroke of the pen outcomes-based regulation was abandoned and rule-based regulation, as had been the case since time immemorial until 2011, was re-introduced. This talk is your guide through the rule changes of substance, and what the SRA’s expectations might be of a firm’s governance.
The SRA, not alone among professional regulators, is also increasingly concerned to ensure that solicitors are not seen to be conducting themselves, both inside and outside the professional arena, in ways that are disreputable, offensive and/or criminal. There has been a rash of high-profile sexual misconduct cases in the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal recently, as well as some concerned with abusive social media postings. This talk examines some of these cases, and concludes that the regulator’s interest in the professional’s private affairs stretches beyond the merely prurient.
