Legal Services Board

The Legal Services Board (LSB) is the independent body responsible for overseeing the regulation of lawyers in England and Wales.

It is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice. Its costs are met entirely by a levy on legal practitioners.

The LSB is both politically and financially independent of Government.

The LSB's statutory mandate is to ensure that regulation in the legal services sector is carried out in the public interest; and that the interests of the consumers of legal services are put at the heart of the legal system in England and Wales.

The LSB became fully active on 1 January 2010, when the new regulatory regime was activated by statute.

The LSB was created by the Legal Services Act 2007 and sits at the apex of the regulatory regime for legal services in England and Wales. It has a duty to promote eight regulatory objectives defined under that Act:

The professional principles are:

The LSB provides oversight regulation of the eight approved regulators named in the Legal Services Act 2007 (LSA 2007).

These bodies directly regulate the 166,853 lawyers practising in England and Wales as of 1 April 2014 which breaks down to 138,243 solicitors, 15,279 barristers, 7,927 chartered legal executives and 5,404 other individuals operating in other areas of the legal profession such as conveyancing.

These approved regulators are:

The LSB has the power to recommend to the Lord Chancellor that he approve further approved regulators. This means that new bodies can apply to the LSB to become frontline regulators of parts of the legal profession. As a result of the LSA 2007 coming into force all changes to these bodies' internal professional regulatory arrangements must be approved by the LSB.

Approved regulators also have a duty to promote the regulatory objectives.

If they fail to do so, or if they fail to comply with the 2007 Act, the LSB can:

The LSB has a duty to regulate practising fees, resolve regulatory conflicts, and work with the Office of Fair Trading (subsequently the Competition and Markets Authority) and the Lord Chancellor on competition issues.

Members are appointed by the Lord Chancellor. The first Chair of the LSB David Edmonds stood down on 30 April 2014 following two terms in the post. He was succeeded as the new Chair by Sir Michael Pitt on 1 May 2014. The Board has nine current members. They are:

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