A synopsis of panel session 8, which takes place on 6 October at ICLR Singapore, kindly provided by the session’s moderator, Victoria Rees. Conference materials will be made available to ICLR.net members after the conference.
Moderator: Victoria Rees, Director of Professional Responsibility, Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society, Canada
Panelists:
- Scott MacLean, Acting Executive Director, Investigations, Office of Health Ombudsmen, Queensland, Australia
- Paul Philip, CEO, Solicitors’ Regulatory Authority, United Kingdom
- Kolantha Sarogenei, CEO, Lockton Companies (Singapore) Pte Ltd., Singapore
With increasing demands and expectations of regulators in an increasingly complex legal services environment, risks to the public, to the profession and to regulators are greater than ever: For example, we’ve seen the impact of technology on the provision of and access to legal services; the rise in cybercrime; growth in global legal service providers and multi-disciplinary practices; economic downturns; changes in lawyer demographics including an aging population and rural depopulation; etc. A competent and relevant regulator must stay abreast and, where possible, ahead of these trends in order to prepare the legal profession for changes impacting it, clients and the public.
Those who regulate lawyers and the legal profession have a shared mandate to protect the public and users of the legal services we regulate. It is essential for effective public protection to understand and manage the risks to achieving that mandate, otherwise we are ourselves at risk of losing our respective roles in the regulation of lawyers. Further, by operating in a risk-focused manner, we are better able to target our limited financial and human resources where they will best protect the public, and enhance the trusted reputation of the regulator.
This session is designed to engage the audience in an interactive discussion facilitated by panelists with experience in various forms of risk assessment and management, and risk-based regulation of lawyers. Through our experiential-based stories, we will highlight the benefits, strengths, opportunities and challenges with this approach to legal services regulation, which can take many different forms.
Through this session, participants will learn about the Nova Scotia experience launching its new Triple P (proactive, principled and proportionate) and risk-focused approach to legal services regulation. You will hear about the successes and challenges faced by the Solicitors’ Regulatory Authority as they have led the way in outcomes and risk-focused regulation; you will learn more about the current status of the Appropriate Management Systems approach and risk-based regulation in Australia, within both the legal and medical professional context; and you will hear stories and lessons learned from the perspective of the professional liability insurer for lawyers in Singapore.
To provide more detailed background and resources from these perspectives in advance, each panelist will prepare a paper citing practical and relevant articles, resources and tools. Important take-aways from this session will include: understanding how to identify risks which are impacting and may impact the provision of legal services, and regulation of lawyers/firms/ABS/MDP; how to manage and respond to those risks in a proportionate manner; and how to develop a risk-focused approach to regulation, regardless of the size or complexity of your jurisdiction’s current regulatory framework.