This guide is written for solicitors, trainees and law students in England and Wales.
Eight approved regulators authorise legal services in England and Wales under the Legal Services Act 2007, each with its own rulebook, disciplinary process and consumer protection arrangements. The Legal Services Board sits above them as oversight regulator. This guide sets out who regulates whom, which reserved activities each covers, and where complaints and compensation go.
How does the framework fit together?
Three layers sit above any individual lawyer, and they are routinely confused with one another.
The Legal Services Board is the oversight regulator, and it neither authorises nor disciplines individual lawyers. It approves changes to regulatory arrangements, and holds powers under sections 32 to 34 of the 2007 Act to direct approved regulators and modify their arrangements. Those powers are used sparingly, and the first occasion on which the LSB used its section 32 enforcement powers was over the SRA’s handling of Axiom Ince, which gives some sense of the threshold. They are also the powers the Consumer Panel now wants deployed to align first-tier complaints handling across all eight regulators without waiting for structural reform.
The approved regulators are the eight bodies designated under the Act. Each is required to separate its representative functions from its regulatory ones, which is why several operate through a distinct regulatory body: the Law Society through the SRA, the Bar Council through the Bar Standards Board, CILEX through CILEx Regulation, and CIPA and CITMA jointly through IPReg. Others regulate directly, or delegate internally to an independently chaired board.
The Legal Ombudsman handles service complaints across the whole framework. Conduct complaints go to the regulator. That division is the one most often described as artificial, and it is the specific target of the Legal Services Consumer Panel’s July 2026 position paper.
Who this guide is for
Solicitors working alongside other regulated professionals in multi-disciplinary practices or ABSs, where the question of who regulates what actually bites, and compliance officers building referral and complaints routes. It is also written for students and trainees who need the structure of the framework rather than the current argument about whether it should survive.
The eight regulators
| Approved regulator | Regulatory body | Regulates | Consumer protection |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Law Society | SRA | Solicitors, RELs and RFLs, recognised bodies and licensed bodies | Mandatory PII on minimum terms, plus the discretionary SRA Compensation Fund |
| The Bar Council | Bar Standards Board | Barristers and BSB-authorised entities | Insurance through the Bar Mutual Indemnity Fund; no compensation fund |
| CILEX | CILEx Regulation | Chartered Legal Executives, CILEX Practitioners and CILEX practices | PII on CRL minimum terms, plus a CRL Compensation Fund |
| Council for Licensed Conveyancers | Regulates directly | Licensed conveyancers, probate practitioners and CLC practices | PII plus a CLC Compensation Fund |
| CIPA and CITMA | IPReg | Patent attorneys and trade mark attorneys | Separate regime; check IPReg’s rules |
| ICAEW | ICAEW Regulatory Board | Accredited probate firms and probate practitioners | Legal Services Compensation Scheme, in force from 9 April 2024 |
| Master of the Faculties | Faculty Office | Notaries | Separate regime; no representative function to separate |
| Association of Costs Lawyers | Costs Lawyer Standards Board | Costs lawyers | CLSB professional indemnity rules |
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland is also an approved regulator for probate activities but does not currently authorise anyone to offer the service in England and Wales, which is why the working figure is eight rather than nine.
Which activities are actually reserved?
Six, under section 12 of and Schedule 2 to the 2007 Act: the exercise of a right of audience, the conduct of litigation, reserved instrument activities, probate activities, notarial activities and the administration of oaths.
Everything else is unreserved, which means general legal advice, contract drafting, will writing and most employment and immigration advice can lawfully be provided by anyone at all. That is the gap the Consumer Panel wants closed by redrawing the perimeter around risk rather than professional title.
The reserved list also explains the asymmetry between regulators. The SRA can license the full range within an ABS except notarial activities, which are reserved to qualified notaries. The CLC can license reserved instrument activities limited to conveyancing, probate and the administration of oaths. IPReg can license rights of audience, the conduct of litigation, reserved instrument activities and the administration of oaths. ICAEW covers non-contentious probate and the administration of oaths.
A lawyer in an ABS can only offer the reserved activities the entity is licensed for. Holding a practising certificate that would otherwise permit the work does not extend the entity’s licence. The consequence is that due diligence on a referral or a merger has to look at what the receiving entity is authorised to do rather than at the qualifications of the people inside it, and in a practice combining solicitors with accountants, conveyancers or attorneys those two answers are frequently different.
In a multi-disciplinary practice the regulator follows the entity’s licence, not the individual’s qualification. A firm that assumes an authorised person can simply do everything they are personally qualified for risks carrying on a reserved activity the entity is not licensed to provide, which is a criminal offence under section 14 of the 2007 Act as well as a regulatory one.
Where do complaints go?
The route depends on what is being complained about, not on which regulator authorised the lawyer.
- Service complaints go to the firm first, then to the Legal Ombudsman, which has jurisdiction across all eight regulators and opened in October 2010. Poor communication, delay, unclear costs information and failure to follow instructions all fall here.
- Conduct complaints go to the relevant regulator. Dishonesty, breach of the code, failures on client money and conflicts fall here.
- Discipline is separate again. Solicitors face the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, an independent body with its own rules and practice directions, to which the SRA brings the great majority of cases. Barristers face the Bar Tribunals and Adjudication Service. Other regulators run their own arrangements.
Where a complaint contains both elements, which is common, it can be split across two bodies. That is the mechanism the Consumer Panel identified in the SSB Law collapse, where on its account more than 100 complaints were miscategorised across the divide.
The case for change
The Consumer Panel’s paper, A Regulatory Framework for the Future, published on 16 July 2026, argues that eight rulebooks and eight sets of protections cannot deliver the Act’s statutory objectives, and asks for one regulator with specialist divisions. It follows the Public Bodies Review led by Richard Lloyd, published on 13 July, which recommended new arrangements be in place by 2029.
The Panel’s evidence base is three failures, and the figures are its own. Axiom Ince, where more than £60m went missing from client account and a partial intervention allowed a further £36m to be lost before full intervention followed, prompting a 270 per cent rise in the SRA compensation fund levy. SSB Law, which collapsed in 2024 with debts exceeding £200m after more than 100 complaints were miscategorised across the service and conduct divide. And the Mazur litigation, which on the Panel’s reading showed that the boundaries of the 2007 Act were understood poorly enough for the profession to have operated in uncertainty for years.
One of the eight may not remain one indefinitely. CILEX has decided that redelegating its regulatory function from CILEx Regulation to the SRA is in the public interest and the SRA has consulted on the arrangements that would follow, but implementation depends on a formal application to the LSB and has not taken effect. Until it does, CILEx Regulation continues to regulate CILEX members, and the SRA has said it would maintain a clear separate identity and route for Chartered Legal Executives and CILEX Practitioners.
Two points to hold separate. The description above is the current law. The Panel’s argument is a proposal, and neither document anticipates a reformed system operating before 2029. The counter-argument, made from the Bar in particular, is that a single regulator need not mean a single method of regulation, and that specialist bodies calibrated to different practice models deliver protection a unitary regulator would struggle to replicate.
Common mistakes
Naming the regulatory body as the approved regulator. The SRA is not an approved regulator; the Law Society is, and delegates its regulatory functions to the SRA, which is a distinction that matters in correspondence and in any application made to the LSB.
Assuming compensation arrangements are equivalent. They are not, and the difference is one of kind rather than of degree, because a discretionary compensation fund and a professional indemnity requirement protect the client against quite different failures on the part of the practitioner.
Sending a service complaint to the regulator. The regulator will not resolve it and time may be lost, because the firm’s own first-tier process comes first and the Legal Ombudsman will ordinarily expect that process to have been exhausted before it takes the complaint on.
Treating unreserved work as unregulated. Work outside the six reserved activities is still subject to the code of conduct when carried out by an authorised person in an authorised entity.
Official sources
- Legal Services Board, approved regulators
- Legal Services Consumer Panel publications
- SRA, proposed arrangements for regulation of CILEX members
Related reading: our guide to first-tier complaints handling, the LSB’s findings on how regulators handled Mazur, and the practising certificate fee rise.
Date last updated
7 August 2026. Under review while the Ministry of Justice review of the Legal Services Board is live, and if the CILEX redelegation to the SRA proceeds.