Paul Philip transformed the SRA, but will he leave it weaker?

Make no mistake: news that Solicitors Regulation Authority chief executive Paul Philip is to step down comes as a shock. There was no laying of groundwork, no nods that his time might soon be up or hints that the Philip garden needs a spruce-up.

Indeed, when asked directly in November whether he intended to resign following the publication of the LSB's damning report into the collapse of the Axiom Ince report, Philip curtly responded: ‘Why?’

At that point he clearly intended to stay on. And it is hardly as if the SRA was preparing for this. The organisation’s own suggestion that being midway through its current strategy makes this a good time for succession to occur is incongruous. The regulator is going through a huge period of transition and on the cusp of making sweeping, sector-changing decisions. This is not, despite protestations otherwise, a good time to go.

So why now? The Axiom Ince report was a body blow but Philip and SRA chair Anna Bradley came out fighting. But we are now waiting for the LSB's delayed report into the regulator's handling of the collapse of SSB Law. Is that a future haymaker that Philip will not be able to shake off? Philip did not accept criticism of his organisation for the way it dithered over and delayed taking decisive action to prevent the Axiom Ince debacle. If the report into SSB Law produces similar conclusions, he may have decided this was a line he can no longer hold.

Eleven years is a long time for a quango boss to be in place and Philip is the personfication of the organisation he led. The SRA is a different animal altogether than it was 12 years ago and it was his orchestration which oversaw it. From being a more passive and relatively insignificant entity (one thinks back to those photographs posed with newly-authorised alternative business structures), it is now far more intrusive, aggressive and all-encompassing.

It also has a far higher profile politically. One of Philip’s early tasks was to authorise the expensive and unsuccessful prosecution of Leigh Day for alleged recklessness over Iraqi civilian claims against the Ministry of Defence. The failed appeal ended costing more than £1m in costs, but rather than retreat into itself, the SRA raised its profile further.

It was omnipresent at party conferences for several years in the 2010s and established the annual compliance conference each November which attracted thousands of solicitors.

The SRA involved itself further in training and continuing competence, and most notably established the Solicitors Qualification Examination (SQE) which overhauled how solicitors entered the profession.

No longer content to only penalise solicitors where money had gone missing, the SRA started to peek behind the curtains and pursue practitioners over matters related to their private lives. The organisation prosecuted solicitors over sexual encounters in the workplace but had its fingers badly burnt in 2020 when the High Court overturned misconduct findings that had been made against a magic circle lawyer.

The regulator has also taken pole position in the campaign against so-called SLAPP lawsuits. 

Members of the profession questioned the SRA’s priorities as it seemed to disproportionately target those who were least equipped to fight back. The decision to appeal the suspended suspension of junior lawyer Sovani James in 2019 (she had backdated four letters while under such stress and pressure that her hair fell out) was perceived as draconian. The pursuit of Claire Matthews – who had left documents on a train and then tried to buy time for a week while she searched for them – is still talked about in the profession as an example of a gross unfairness. The regulator is also at loggerheads with the profession over its proposals for the potential abolition of client accounts. 

Given the SRA’s increasingly high profile, it was noticeable that Philip himself retreated from public scrutiny. Public attendance at board meetings was stopped and the media limited to asking questions weeks after meetings, sometimes relying on board papers released only an hour before briefings. These often became tense affairs where Philip bristled at questions and - as happened last November - leaving as soon as questions were done.

This was a missed opportunity. The SRA came across as unyielding, autocratic and unable to articulate its core messages. The desire for greater fining powers, the ramping up of AML activity and the sudden hike in fines for misconduct such as drink-driving all hinted at an organisation out of touch with its regulated community, and unable to hear grumblings of discontent.

Philip will leave his post with the SRA unrecognisable from when he took it up. But he will also leave behind an organisation that has lost the confidence of much of the profession and amid chronic uncertainty about its mission and purpose.