Are we seeing some sort of metamorphosis over at the SRA?

This week saw the kind of rhetoric that will put the frighteners on any law firm veering dangerously close to the red.

The language used on a report into outstanding premiums may have seemed like the usual corporate speak, but there were some sinister undertones lurking beneath.

It talks of firms now being ‘actively pursued’, almost as though the authority is knocking on high street solicitor’s doors with a crow bar and knuckle-dusters.

Capita, as manager of the Assigned Risks Pool, is holding the weapons, standing alongside the regulator like Oddjob guarding Goldfinger. The enforcement company has the green light to ‘pursue individuals to bankruptcy’ if they fail to keep up repayments on their default premiums.

Of course, there will be plenty of you reading this that scoff at the idea of a rigid regulator terrifying firms into compliance. The words ‘SRA and enforcement’ have in the past seemed paradoxical.

But now the authority wants you to believe it has transformed into some David Banner figure, ripping off its shirt and screaming ‘you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry’.

To an extent, the rhetoric has started to morph into action. Almost £1m has been sliced from the outstanding premium bill since the end of March, with many firms heeding the warnings from their regulator.

There have even been 138 firms closed down in the last two years, 119 of them in what the SRA calls an ‘orderly fashion’ - a euphemism for essentially handing a firm a revolver and telling it to take a long walk into the woods.

Cynics will argue they’ve had years to put the system right and have allowed the ARP to become clogged up with uninsurable and desperate firms.

Even now the authority waits to scrap the ARP, sitting on its hands whilst well-managed firms feel the wrath of the insurance industry in the form of hiked premiums.

Indeed, there will be plenty of solicitors relishing this new, tough-talking SRA. Debt has chased weak firms like a lion hunting the lame wildebeest, and the rest of the herd is in no mood to turn back to help.

But with every closed firm, with every debt collection and with every ‘pursuit to bankruptcy’, we’d do well to remember there are tragic human stories behind many.

There will be few tears shed for firms that have bent the rules and come unstuck, but we should mourn those that were simply swallowed up by financial trouble and failed to recover.

The SRA may be reveling in its newly adopted role as a third Mitchell brother, but there’s always room for compassion amidst the muscle-flexing.