Assessing How Lawyers Keep Their Own Houses Clean: Baseline Report on Outcomes-Focused Regulation Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • A fundamental tenet of lawyer regulation is that professionals should keep their own houses clean. The enactment of the Legal Services Act of 2007 (LSA) in the United Kingdom (UK) marked a significant shift in the approach to regulation of lawyer conduct. In addition to creating a new mechanism for handling consumer complaints, the LSA adopted a new regulatory regime that represented a radical departure from the traditional approach in which regulators prosecute complaints based on alleged rule violations. With the adoption of the LSA, lawyer regulation shifted to outcomes-focused regulation (OFR). OFR focuses on high level principles and outcomes that drive the provision of legal services.1 OFR requires an articulation of indicators to determine whether outcomes have been achieved.

author list (cited authors)

  • Fortney, S. S.

complete list of authors

  • Fortney, Susan Saab

publication date

  • February 2012