SRA compliance and law firm risk news: regulatory changes, COLP and COFA duties, disciplinary decisions, AML rules and professional indemnity insurance.
The regulator has rewritten the wording on separating compliance roles after owners of small practices said the original rule was unworkable. The change is nar…
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The oversight regulator says progress is not fast enough and will impose further statutory directions, while expressing disappointment at the "standard of lead…
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An independent review commissioned by the SRA itself finds the regulator held enough intelligence to act on the PM Law Group long before its February collapse.…
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The PM Law collapse is now expected to generate £30m in claims on the SRA Compensation Fund, and every practising solicitor is about to help pay for it. Indivi…
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Lord Justice Warby said the case against DWF Law had 'fluctuated and mutated', with a new argument raised for the first time at the appeal hearing. It is a poi…
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The Legal Services Board has approved SRA rules requiring larger firms to split the COLP and COFA roles above a £600,000 client account threshold. The principl…
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The SRA-focused consultancy founded by former senior regulator Crispin Passmore and Juliet Oliver has added former FCA figure Alex Roy to lead a new financial…
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Leading law firm advisers have told the Solicitors Regulation Authority that requiring notification of mergers and acquisitions at heads of terms would be unwo…
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The Law Society backs earlier risk detection but says a rule letting the SRA prescribe notifiable events whenever it chooses is a wide enabling power with thin…
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The Association of Costs Lawyers has called for lower-value solicitor-client costs disputes to be handled through a specialist online portal rather than the Le…
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The oversight regulator has signed off rules separating compliance officer roles from managers who can act alone, with a phased rollout from January 2027 and a…
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The Solicitors Regulation Authority has logged dozens of reports of AI misuse in a single year and issued a warning notice on hallucinated citations, supervisi…
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CEDR co-founder Dr Karl Mackie CBE — dubbed 'Mr Mediation' — has died aged 79, leaving a dispute resolution profession he helped build from scratch.
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Resolution has pushed back hard on claims that giving cohabiting couples legal protection amounts to marriage by stealth, or that it would flood the family cou…
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SRA compliance now shapes almost every management decision a law firm makes. This section covers regulation, risk and professional conduct in England and Wales: rule changes, consultations, disciplinary outcomes, and the practical burden that lands on compliance officers when the regulator shifts position.
The COLP and COFA roles carry more weight than ever. Compliance officers are expected to spot problems early, report material breaches promptly, and evidence a functioning system rather than a policy folder. Recent rule changes around who can hold those roles, and how firms separate them, have prompted a rethink in smaller practices where one person has traditionally worn both hats alongside a full caseload. We report on what the changes mean in practice and how firms are restructuring their governance in response.
Client money remains the sharpest risk in the profession. Interventions and firm collapses have pushed compensation fund contributions upward and reopened the question of whether firms should hold client money at all. Our coverage follows the SRA's thinking, the profession's response, and the consequences for firms that must budget for a levy shaped by other people's failures.
Anti-money laundering supervision, source of funds checks, sanctions screening and client due diligence take up a growing share of fee earner time, particularly in conveyancing and private client work. We cover enforcement trends, common findings from AML audits, and the documentation that actually satisfies an inspection.
Professional indemnity insurance is the other permanent risk conversation. Premiums, notification obligations, run-off cover, and the claims patterns driving underwriters' appetite all affect how firms take on work. Cyber incidents and payment diversion fraud have made insurers considerably more interested in a firm's internal controls than in its claims record alone.
Disciplinary decisions are covered here too. Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal outcomes tell you a great deal about where the regulator's attention sits — dishonesty, misuse of client account, failures of supervision and, increasingly, the misuse of generative AI in litigation. We report these cases because the lessons are usually about systems and culture rather than one individual's misjudgement.
Alongside enforcement, this section tracks the wider regulatory architecture: Legal Services Board oversight of the SRA, Law Society interventions, consultations on notification duties and merger reporting, and the slow rebalancing of responsibility between regulator and regulated. The direction of travel is toward earlier disclosure and greater personal accountability for named individuals.
Compliance is often treated as a cost. Handled well it is closer to insurance against the failures that end firms. Practice Wire's compliance and risk coverage is written for COLPs, COFAs, risk partners and managing partners who need to know what changed, why it matters and what to do about it before the deadline.