Legal Futures asked me: “too many or too few” Accounts Rules?
I am delighted to have been asked by Legal Futures to contribute to a feature considering the future for the SRA’s Accounts Rules. Here’s what I had to say:
“When the compliance roles were introduced, the lack of real practical guidance was a huge issue for the majority of firms – particularly smaller firms who felt the burden of compliance most keenly both in terms of increased costs and the hidden costs of lost fee earning time.
Looking ahead, the SRA have indicated their commitment to condensing the Accounts Rules significantly by April 2016. The current SRA Accounts Rules are some 57 pages without including the various appendices – looking at other regulators and you see that the CLC’s Accounts Rules total 10 pages with a further 10 pages of separate guidance, IPS’s Accounts Rules total 16 pages and Notary’s Accounts Rules total 12 pages. It is a fair conclusion then that the SRA’s Accounts Rules could be considered somewhat over burdensome.
I expect that the usual suspects are likely to be on the “hit-list”: the 14 day rule on transferring costs and the 2 day rule on paying or transferring unpaid professional disbursements. Whilst there are good historic reasons underlying why these rules exist, it’s difficult under OFR to see how breaches of these rules are meaningful. Changes to move the interest provision to be more outcomes focussed were made in 2011 yet the SRA interest provisions still remain very prescriptive – other regulators simply require that interest is paid.
I’d also suggest that the CLC approach of segregating guidance from rules into two separate documents is useful. I do feel that more guidance particularly on what is not acceptable would be helpful but that easy accessibility is key. In truth, there is quite a lot of guidance from the SRA under the Resources section of their website but to me it feels very piecemeal and relies on some tenacity on the part of the COFA to pull all the various sources of guidance together to form a comprehensive picture.”
To see the full article published in the April 2015 Legal Futures Insight e-magazine:
http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk//launch.aspx?eid=0e166ac2-8f50-4d4e-a171-a3356a58ad53
