I met representatives of the Legal Services Board and the Solicitors Regulation Authority this week. Among many things discussed, I told them the obvious: that the ease of explanation to outsiders of the UK’s regulatory system for the legal profession has not been improved by the Clementi reforms, but made a lot worse. That is confirmed by the report last week that MPs also want to see simplification in the regulation of legal services. So I have developed three golden rules for regulation of the legal profession, in order to see how the UK measures up to them in comparison with its partners in Europe. These are not regulatory principles dealing with issues like independence or compliance, but rather rules for overall regulatory structures.

Rule One: SimplicityAn American biologist, EO Wilson, said this about scientific theory: ‘The elegance, we can fairly say the beauty, of any particular scientific generalisation is measured by its simplicity relative to the number of phenomena it can explain.’ The same should be true of regulation. A regulatory structure should of its nature be able to cover - to regulate - as many of the same phenomena, in our case lawyers, as possible. Is this true of the current UK structure?

The UK stands out in Europe by its multiplicity of structures. There are three examples of fragmentation: geography, the unity of the profession, and the unity of the regulatory structure.

First, geographic fragmentation. There are three legal systems in the UK - England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. No other member state of the EU has this complication. The closest is Belgium, which has one legal system but two languages, and so has two bars, one for each of the language groups (French and Flemish, with the small German-speaking population of lawyers in with the French). Even Spain, which has strong tendencies towards regionalisation, has one overarching bar.

Second, the question of two legal professions. Here the UK is not alone in its solicitor-barrister (or advocate in Scotland) dichotomy. Obviously, Ireland has a similar system, but Poland, too, has legal advisors and advocates as a holdover from the former Communist system. I realise that there are notaries in many Continental countries, but I do not include them in this split because usually their work and the work of lawyers (‘advocates’) does not overlap.

Third, there is the split between regulatory and representative (think Law Society and SRA). Here again the UK is not alone, since we can find an equivalent in Germany where the legal profession has for a long time been split between the regulatory and the representative bars. Denmark, too, is working towards a similar system.

I would like you to note something from the list above. No country other than the UK appears in more than one category. In other words, the others have only one fragmentation to deal with. The UK alone has three separate fragmentations. I need say no more about its compliance with the first golden rule, simplicity.

Rule Two: EfficiencyI look to another scientific principle, Occam’s razor: ‘Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.’ I have seen in other EU countries that where there are two or more bodies dealing with what is dealt with by one body elsewhere there is friction and waste of energy (to put it politely). Now in the UK, and taking only solicitors of England and Wales, we have three bodies with responsibilities over the same territory, which used to be dealt with by the Law Society alone: the Legal Services Board, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Law Society. We can read about their so-called ‘creative tensions’ every day in the legal press. Audits are a very popular term nowadays, used freely by these three bodies. What about an audit of the time and money spent in boundary and other disputes caused by the creation of three where one used to be acceptable? I believe that this audit is likely to lead to the conclusion that the second golden rule of regulation, efficiency, is also not being complied with.

Rule Three: You should work in the direction of the other two rules It is obvious that the tendency in any regulatory structure should be towards simplicity and efficiency. You might not have arrived there yet, but all changes should tend in that direction. The Clementi reforms, though, work in the opposite direction of both rules.

Without doubt, there are historical reasons, vested interests and the playing out of absolutely indispensable regulatory principles to justify why the status quo should be defended to the death. But I can only say that my golden rules sound right to me, and the UK regulatory structure (in my view) fails them. Other countries, where surprisingly civilisation has not yet ended, manage with structures that conform much more closely to the ideal. Anyone in favour of another round of reforms, this time in compliance with the golden rules?

Jonathan Goldsmith is secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents about one million European lawyers through its member bars and law societies. He blogs weekly for the Gazette on European affairs