The Legal Services Board (LSB) is seeking views on its draft strategy for the legal services sector and on its draft business plan 2021-22. Welcoming responses to the consultation by 5 February 2021.
The consultation is as follows:
Draft Strategy for the Legal Services Sector
In November 2020, we published our State of Legal Services 2020 report. This offers an in-depth review of the legal services sector following ten years of independent regulation.
Our report concludes that despite the achievements of the last decade, the legal services market is not working as well as it should be and that the basic legal needs of many citizens are not being met.
The challenges facing the sector have been condensed into three strategic themes: fairer outcomes, stronger confidence, and better services. In the strategy, we identify priority areas of focus over the next three years (2021-2024) and outline how we plan to make a difference to these areas.
Collaboration is key to delivering fairer outcomes, stronger confidence, and better services. In identifying priority areas of focus over the next three years, we call on individuals and organisations to step forward and identify how else they can make a difference.
Draft Business Plan 2021-22
Our draft business plan 2021-22 lays the foundations for helping the sector to overcome the challenges of fairer outcomes, stronger confidence, and better services. We plan to do this by continuing our work on diversity and inclusion, consumer engagement, and technology and innovation, as well as our statutory functions.
We also plan to begin work on the scope of regulation, consumer vulnerability, and on our policy framework, as well as exploring areas such as legal expenses insurance, legal support for small businesses and an idea for ‘simple legal products’.
Flexibility will continue to be a key feature of our approach in 2021-22. This will enable us to adapt our work to support the sector as the full effects of Covid-19 continue to unfold, and to take account of wider public policy reviews that may shed light on additional areas of work.
See more details about the consultation here, the consultation document here, the strategy document here or the business plan here.