Ian Muirhead: Redefining the professional services market

Until the Legal Services Act was about to become a reality, the Law Society fulfilled both functions, but it succumbed to government pressure and hived off its regulatory arm into the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). The SRA, however, is technically a subsidiary of the La\w Society, which is able to retain a proportion of solicitors' practising fees for its representative functions and, as a result of this mutually unsatisfactory relationship, the two organisations have been at loggerheads ever since - to the evident displeasure of the LSB. Currently, most of what solicitors do ...