rblog

Consumers. Customers. Clients. However we define people, they are central to our economy, and central to our work here at the SRA.

Small businesses make up 99% of the private sector. With the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy estimating that there were 5.7 million private sector businesses in 2017, that’s a lot of companies.

In an age of consumer research, targeted ads, and artificial intelligence, the sound of a new survey dropping into your inbox has become inescapable. 

July brings sunshine, the start of the school holidays and our annual Risk Outlook. 

Do people notice and engage with information about regulation and protections in legal services? And does it help with their decision making?

ABSs no riskier and more innovative than other business models Debra Malpass Evaluating the early stage impacts of ABS, MDP and SBR  We are delivering a programme of regulatory reform, with proposals for shorter and less prescriptive code of conducts and accounts rules, more practising flexibi

The annual Risk Outlook gives information to help protect firms and their clients. We release an update every spring and autumn, giving law firms and solicitors the latest information, trends and case studies for each of our Priority Risks.

 Conveyancing is one of the most common legal services people use, with more than one million homes bought and sold every year in the UK. Despite these high numbers, very little research has been published that shines a light on people’s experiences of conveyancing, and the service they receive from solicitors.

It is an exciting time for research for us at the SRA, as we begin a new programme of projects for 2018.

Early last year, we outlined how our research team had introduced a new behavioural insights workstream that would focus on conducting behaviourally-informed experimental research

We recently published research into the complaints made about legal services from solicitors.

As an organisation, we recently held the fifth conference for Compliance Officers for Legal Practice (COLPs) and Compliance Officers for Finance and Administration (COFAs).

The Research and Analysis team were invited to present at the LERN conference.

The work we do here at the SRA allows us to explore and discover new things about the legal services market.

July has been another exciting and productive month for the Research and Analysis team.

We are living at a time where policy makers, regulators and firms are focusing on how they can empower consumers. We have seen a boom in the use of comparison websites in insurance markets

We recently held our second innovation conference. We welcomed more than 100 original thinkers to London’s Altitude 360. The panoramic views provided the perfect catalyst for a morning spent thinking big.

April is here, and with it our spring update to the Priority Risks page for our Risk Outlook. We want to explain a little more here about why we publish quarterly updates to the Risk Outlook, and what we have updated this time. 

Earlier this month we published research on family law. Changes to legal aid have affected access to public funding for some, and this was just one of the reasons why we felt the time was right to understand consumers' experiences in this area.

Behavioural Insights at the SRA In recent blog posts, we have touched upon our plans to embed behavioural insights into our research. We now want to explain in a little more detail what behavioural insights are, and how they will apply to our work. 

New year - New research Debra Malpass 2017-01-24 Research continues to play an important role in shaping our policies and in supporting the way we work. Our last blog of 2016 provided a flavour of the research planned for the year ahead, and highlighted our commitment to embedding new ideas into

Welcome to our final blog of 2016. The festive break is usually a time people use for reflection on the events of the year, and we are no different. 

The way that solicitors communicate with their clients can help to improve access to legal services.

We have all seen the adverts on TV offering legal help to us following a trip, slip or fall at work that wasn't our fault.

Managing constitutional change is not something you have had to deal with too often, if at all.

We often talk about diversity, and rightly so. We have a duty to encourage a diverse legal profession which is representative of the communities it serves and where barriers to entry have been removed. Ultimately, a more diverse profession is a more competitive profession.

Every year we produce a Risk Outlook  to outline priority risks to the public, the effective administration of justice, and the rule of law.

In this year’s Risk Outlook, we are taking a closer look at complaints handling as part of poor standards of service.

The team is currently working hard on the new SRA Risk Outlook, and once again we will be highlighting the risk of poor standard of service.

Keeping your information safe Debra Malpass 2016-04-14 Information security: it’s a vital duty for any law firm. While you cannot avoid risks to information by avoiding IT – paper has problems all of its own – it’s undeniable that cybercrime can cause real harm. It’s no accident that it’s one of our

Understanding the changing legal market is key to the work we do in the Research and Analysis team. Luckily I have a team full of inquisitive minds who want to know how solicitors work now and in the future

This month the team are starting to gather evidence for our annual Risk Outlook. This the first year I’ve been involved in this work, and I was keen to understand the team’s approach to gathering evidence.

2016 brings many exciting changes for us all - personal resolutions or business plans. We in the Risk Centre are no different, and have had a few changes of our own!

I have a confession to make. I like a chat... and as the end of the year approaches, I’ve been reflecting on 2015 at the SRA. If I could sum it up in one phrase it would be ‘a year of engagement’, or perhaps, just ‘chatting to you as much as possible!’

Thank you to all of you who joined us at the COLP COFA conference earlier this month. It was great to meet so many of you in person and we hope you enjoyed the day. For those of you who weren't there, we ran sessions on reforming our regulation, managing the client account, supporting small firms and many more.

Let’s get interactive. Please google legal advice for small businesses. We’ll wait here.

Earlier this year I wrote a blog about research we’d jointly commissioned with the Legal Services Board into innovation. The report, which you can read here, was published in July. I know lots of you of have already read the report and the findings sparked some interesting debate. However, I’m sure the idea of reading an academic paper on innovation in legal services isn’t every lawyers ideal way to wind down. This blog therefore summarises the findings, hopefully encouraging you to take a more in-depth look at the report.

This year’s Risk Outlook was published on 21 July, and we’ve already had a lot of interest—the report has had over 3,000 web hits and counting. You’ve been tweeting about it and there’s been media articles exploring several different risks.

July is Scams Awareness Month 2015. Citizens Advice and Trading Standards Services are holding a series of activities throughout the month to raise awareness of different types of scams and how they work. Their aim is to create 'a self-supporting network of confident, alert, consumers. People ready, willing and able to spot scams'.

I’ve posted before about the role of horizon scanning in business planning, and why there is value in looking further ahead than just the next few years. You may recall I talked about how we rarely see that much real change over a relatively short time, even during great disruption; it’s usually long after they first appear that we find out what the real game-changing innovations are.

Where can I find statistics about how the housing market has changed, or the latest figures on the value of the legal services market? These are the type of questions I've been asking myself over the last few weeks, as I search for the best sources of contextual data for the next SRA Risk Outlook.

One of the benefits of managing the research and risk analysis team at the SRA are the invites to attend academic conferences and gain new insights into the market we regulate.

As a regulator, it never hurts to think about what we do and why we do it. OK, we punish wrong- doing and provide consumer protection. But is that all there is to legal regulation?

Our most recent poll asked you to choose from a selection of risks not featured in the Outlook, and select the one you’d like to know a little more about. The winner, with 36% of the votes, was inadequate complaints handling.

What’s the future going to look like? There can't be too many organisations that wouldn't benefit from asking themselves that question.

The festive season is often a time of traditions. From the food we serve, to the presents we give, through to the schedule we follow, we tend to head down a path that we’ve trodden many times before.

We are always looking to improve our understanding of risk in the legal services market. This is partly achieved by analysing the issues that are reported to us. But It is only when listening to solicitors, firms and other stakeholders that a more complete picture emerges.  

In the 1800s, American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote “Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.” Whether or not you think this statement is true across the board, it is certainly still very relevant to risk management today.

Picture a surgeon and a nurse standing side by side. Is the surgeon male and the nurse female?

As many of you will know, we published the second Risk Outlook in July. It outlines the key changes in the legal services market and identifies the key risks that need to be managed.

Almost as hotly contested and eagerly anticipated as the outcome of the Scottish independence referendum—but not quite as important as the Sunday shows for Strictly and X Factor—the results of our poll are finally in!

When does one person's image problem hurt an entire market?

We've been tracking media coverage of the Risk Outlook 2014/15 since its publication on 1 July. We’ve received wide-ranging, positive coverage, which has highlighted how the Outlook can help law firms manage risk.