Annual Report Summary 2022/23 – about this report

The areas covered in this report are:

• Authorisation – this covers our work on how we decide to authorise firms and individuals and the numbers of firms and individuals we regulate. We continue to see the profession grow each year, while the number of law firms decrease.
• Client Protection – this reports on our interventions work (where we effectively close down the practice of a firm or solicitor) and our management of the compensation fund. The fund can make payments to members of the public and small businesses to replace money taken or improperly used by their solicitor. We saw a seven-year high in the number of interventions we carried out in 2022/23, as well as the amount we paid out from our compensation fund.
• Education and Training – this includes information on the number of newly qualified solicitors entering the profession as well as the number of solicitor apprentices. The number of individuals who qualified through the Solicitors Qualifying Examination continues to grow as it becomes the main route to the profession. And the number of new solicitor apprentice registrations has increased by 33% compared to last year.
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion – this provides an update on progress against five key themes which shaped our work in 2022/23. These included improving our understanding of diversity in the profession through publishing our updated diversity tool and two significant pieces of research.
• Upholding Professional Standards and Key Enforcement Themes – this discusses trends in the reports of concern we receive about solicitors and firms, the types of enforcement action we take and the themes in our enforcement work. We took more regulatory action in 2022/23 compared to previous years, which was mainly driven by an increase in our proactive work to check compliance with our rules. We have also been progressing work to improve both the timeliness and quality of our investigation and enforcement work. A key priority has been reducing the number of longstanding investigations. This resulted in us referring more cases to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal compared to previous years.
• Diversity Monitoring Work – this is the fifth year where we have reported on diversity characteristics of the people involved in our investigation and enforcement processes. We continue to see an overrepresentation of men and individuals from a Black, Asian and minority ethnic background in the concerns reported to us compared to the practising population. The overrepresentation is higher when cases pass our assessment threshold test and we decide to investigate them. We published the findings of a significant piece of research into this work, carried out by an independent consortium.