This time next year the Solicitors Regulation Authority could be the regulator for 8,191 chartered legal executives as well as the 200,000 or so solicitors it currently keeps tabs on.

If representative body CILEX gets the seal of approval to switch regulator, should the SRA change its name? After all, once upon a time the regulator was called the Law Society Regulation Board but changed its name 'to emphasise our independence and to make what we do clearer’.

Surely, then, the regulator should change its name to make clearer it’s not just solicitors who are overseen?

SRA chief executive Paul Philip told journalists this week that the regulator had spoken to CILEX and the Law Society about whether changing its name would be a good thing or not. 

He pointed out that the SRA already regulates other categories of people who aren't solicitors. Three-quarters of CILEX members, including paralegals and trainee CILEX lawyers, work in SRA-regulated firms, so are captured by SRA regulation. 

However, he said: ‘If it is deemed appropriate and someone can come up with a better name at some point, we will think about that.’

One reader has already come up with an excellent suggestion: RoLex + (Regulator of Legal Executives and Others). Though a certain Swiss watch designer may have something to say about that. Likewise we understand that the abbreviated form, X, is already spoken for.

Or if an empire-building Cube wishes to cater for all future options, why not simply The Regulator? 

Any other suggestions?

 

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