Do COLPS replace or replenish solicitors’ professionalism?

Speaker: Professor Joan Loughrey (University of Leeds) and Dr Sundeep Aulakh (Leeds University Business School)
Discussant: Jonathan Kembery (Global Risk & Compliance Director, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP)
Admission: Free
Accreditation: This event is accredited with 1 CPD hour with the SRA and BSB

About the talk

The role of the Compliance Officer for Legal Practice (COLP) is a key innovation arising from the Legal Services Act 2007. There is a growing debate over whether COLPs are ‘instrumental in creating a culture of compliance throughout a firm’,as the SRA hoped, or whether the role is instead inadvertently undermining professionalism, by leading to, or exacerbating a tendency for, solicitors to seek their COLP’s decision on what their individual professional obligations require. Outcomes Focused Regulation (OFR) may increase this risk insofar as solicitors are uncomfortable with the level of discretionary judgment OFR requires. There is a risk that solicitors’ capacity for ethical judgment could be eroded or under-developed. This is a matter of some importance given that SRA’s review of its Handbook to simplify the requirements that individuals and firms are subject to whilst retaining OFR and with a view to striking the right balance between individual and entity regulation.

This lecture examines these issues in the light of interviews with twenty-four COLPs/compliance personnel from a range of legal service firms. It reports the findings of these interviews, and the questions and hypotheses that these provoke and considers the implications for the on-going review of the regulation of solicitors and legal services firms by the SRA.

About the speakers

Professor Joan Loughrey is the Deputy Head of the School of Law, University of Leeds, having previously been Director of the Centre for Business Law and Practice, one of the School’s research centres. After studying Law at Somerville College, University of Oxford, and being awarded a College Exhibition, she was admitted as a solicitor of the High Court of England and Wales and later of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong. She practised as a solicitor in both jurisdictions before entering academia. Her research interests span two fields: the legal profession and corporate law with a particular focus on regulation, compliance and accountability. She has written widely on corporate law and the legal profession, including a monograph, Corporate Lawyers and Corporate Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2011), an edited collection Directors’ Duties and Shareholder Litigation in the Wake of the Financial Crisis, (Edward Elgar, 2012) and articles including ‘Accountability and the Regulation of the Large Law Firm Lawyer’, (2014) 77 Modern Law Review 732.

Dr Sundeep Aulakh is an Academic Fellow at Leeds University Business School (Work and Employment Relations Division). Her research focuses on the organization and management practices of professional service firms, and the regulation of professions. This is informed by a number of theoretical perspectives including: institutional theory, the sociology of professions literature, and public and private interest theories of regulation. Sundeep is conducting research on the legal profession, with one project examining the emergence of Alternative Business Structures and another examining the role of compliance officers. Sundeep is also interested in the development of new occupational fields and professions and is examining a research project examining barriers to a diversified workforce in public relations. She is also part of a research team that has been commissioned by the American ASAE Foundation to undertake a qualitative study to explore and summarise the core features, challenges and outcomes of the process of professionalisation in the modern era.