The LSRA publishes reports on Legal Practitioner Education and Training & Unification of Legal Profession

The Legal Services Regulatory Authority (LSRA) today [Thursday 19 November] publishes two separate reports with recommendations to the Minister for Justice, in fulfilment of its statutory mandate to ensure the maintenance and improvement of standards in the provision of legal services by legal practitioners.

Both reports have been submitted to the Minister, as required under section 34 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015.

The first report, Setting Standards: Legal Practitioner Education and Training, recommends reforms to, for the first time, define the competence and standards required to practise as a solicitor or barrister.

It also recommends the establishment of a statutory framework to accredit existing providers of legal practitioner education and training as well as, for the first time, allowing new providers to be accredited to provide professional training for solicitors and barristers.

In the second report, Greater than the Sum of Its Parts? Consideration of Unification of the Solicitors’ Profession and Barristers’ Profession, the Authority concludes that at this stage in its regulatory timeline it would be premature to recommend that the two branches of the profession be unified. The Authority undertakes in the report to return to the matter within five years, when it anticipates that the landscape for legal services provision will have evolved sufficiently in order for it to reconsider the question of unification as posed in the Act. 

The report notes that the Authority has taken account of pending, proposed and potential reforms which would change the landscape for legal services delivery in the years ahead and impact on the regulatory framework for barristers and solicitors.

The reports can be found on the LSRA website here.