I have been to several Westminster Legal Policy Forum conferences on legal education, but the two I want to focus on were four years and seven months apart: 8 February 2022 and 10 September 2026. The title of the first included ongoing competence in the legal profession. The title of the second concerned legal education and training in England and Wales.
This is not a comparison of the two events. Both programmes gave real time to the route into practice. What interests me is one question that was put in the room in 2022, and where it has got to since. I have drawn on the Forum’s transcripts of both events, on the Legal Services Board’s published papers, and on the handwritten notes I made in 2022.
February 2022: the question in the room
The first session was largely about competence after qualification, chaired by Alex Chalk, then QC MP. The Legal Services Board (LSB), which oversees the legal regulators, was consulting at the time on four outcomes it wanted every regulator to pursue. Chris Nichols, its Director of Policy and Regulation, explained why. Attention, he said, had gone to assuring competence before people enter the profession and very little to what happens afterwards, so regulators could not say with confidence how often competence problems arose.
Alex tested that from the start. He put to Chris that some would say the proposal was a solution to a problem that did not exist, and later asked whether those proposing change did not need to provide the evidence to justify it. Julie Brannan, the Director of Education and Training at the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), described what the SRA already did, then said the crux was whether regulators could be confident enough that they knew enough to know where to take appropriate action. Mark Neale, then Director General of the Bar Standards Board (BSB), said that on joining the BSB he had been struck by how much less well stocked the armoury looked for assuring competence across a long career than for training and qualification. He pointed to the BSB’s rules on continuing professional development (CPD), which it spot checks, and to a competitive market in which many barristers work under the eyes of instructing solicitors.
Mark Fenhalls KC, then QC and chair of the Bar, put the burden the other way. He said he had yet to see evidence of a real problem in particular areas, and that the burden lay with the LSB to show there was one. If regulators could show him incompetence in particular areas, he said, he would “move heaven and earth” to work with them.
By the end of the session the room had agreed on one thing. Chris accepted that the work had to be evidence based and targeted, and when Alex asked whether solutions must follow evidence, he answered “Absolutely”. What the room had not settled was whether the evidence already existed, and who had to produce it.
What the LSB did with it
The LSB’s Board met on 7 June 2022 and discussed the themes from the consultation. The paper before it began from the position that none of the regulators had meaningful evidence on levels of competence after initial qualification. It recorded that some respondents argued there was an absence of evidence of a widespread lack of competence. The LSB did not consider that wholly accurate, noting that none of the regulators was regularly making a comprehensive assessment of competence across its regulated community.
The Board’s published minutes record the discussion. A number of respondents had asserted that there was no evidence of a lack of competence; it was noted in discussion that this suggested “a gap in the evidence base”, and so a need to take steps to understand levels of competence in the professions. The minutes do not refer to the February debate at the Westminster Legal Policy Forum. The same argument was before the LSB Board, and they record how it was weighed.
On 19 July 2022 the Board agreed the final Statement of Policy, which the LSB issued on 28 July. It sets four outcomes for regulators, the second of which is to regularly determine the levels of competence within the profession they regulate. It also requires regulators to put in place measures to routinely collect relevant information about the competence of the people they authorise. The July minutes record the point that the onus would be on regulators to justify their course of action expressly on the evidence they had gathered.
What the LSB said it would do next
The LSB’s regulatory performance assessments are its published reviews of how each regulator is doing its job. In February 2024 it recorded, in its section on the SRA, that the SRA considered it already met some of the requirements of the statement of policy, that several areas of work remained, and that the LSB would expect evidence that the SRA had met all of them. In March 2025, in its section on the Faculty Office, which regulates notaries, it said it intended to publish a comprehensive analysis of regulators’ compliance with the statement of policy later that year.
I have looked for that analysis on the LSB’s website and have not found it. It may exist, and if it does I would be glad to be shown. What the regulators themselves have published since is the subject of my last piece, Nobody asked whether it worked.
September 2026: the programme
The 2026 programme was weighted towards entry to the profession: qualification routes, the SQE, apprenticeships, barriers to entry, alternative routes in, early careers recruitment, and AI and professional judgement. That is not surprising. Ewen Macleod, the BSB’s Director of Strategy and Policy, listed among the concerns raised with the BSB that too many students do not complete the course or pass the exams, and that the ratio of students to pupillage places is too high. Those are pressing problems, and they sit squarely within a forum on education and training.
Continuing development appeared in the description of one session, and the regulators addressed competence after qualification in the closing session. Beth Black, the SRA’s Director of Education and Training, said that its approach since 2016 has centred on lawyers reflecting on their learning and development, and added: “We know this works really well in some cases, but not always.” She said the SRA had recently consulted on strengthening its continuing competence approach, and hoped to share its post consultation position this autumn. Ewen Macleod said the BSB was at the beginning of a review of its education and training requirements, before and after qualification. Jonathan Levack of CILEx Regulation described its annual CPD sampling.
I could not find in the agenda or transcript a specific topic or discussion of what is known about levels of competence among lawyers already in practice, which was the question the 2022 session was built around.
What I would like to know
What I would like to know is where the evidence the 2022 room asked for now sits. The LSB required regulators in July 2022 to regularly determine the levels of competence in their professions. I would like to be able to read, ideally in one place, what has been found about whether lawyers in practice are competent, as distinct from whether they have completed their CPD learning.
The SRA’s position on its continuing competence consultation earlier this year and the BSB’s review of its education and training requirements are both still to come.
In the margin of my notes from February 2022 I wrote Regulators should show evidence. I think that is still the right place to start.
A note on sources
Quotations from the Forum are taken from the Westminster Legal Policy Forum’s transcripts of “Next steps for legal education and training, and ongoing competence in the legal profession” (8 February 2022) and “Next steps for legal education and training in England and Wales” (10 September 2026). I am grateful to the Forum and to the speakers for their contributions. The Forum states that its transcripts are automated and may contain errors, and the speakers have not had the opportunity to correct them. The 2022 handwritten notes are mine.
The LSB material is Board Paper (22) 30, “Ongoing competence: emerging themes from consultation“, for the Board meeting of 7 June 2022; the minutes of the Board meetings of 7 June 2022 and 19 July 2022; the LSB’s “Statement of policy: ongoing competence” of 28 July 2022; and its regulatory performance assessments published in February 2024 and March 2025.
