Obiter occasionally runs into readers of the Gazette who request more good news stories (noticeably, these people don’t appear to read such stories, but we digress).

One organisation which has no problem with bad news is – and bear with us on this – the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The regulator’s latest performance update, included in papers for this month’s board meeting, reveals that positive coverage was ‘significantly up’ as a proportion of all media stories during the final quarter of 2021/22, compared with the same period a year before.

Indeed, for a seventh consecutive quarter, positive media coverage outweighed the negative. The update stated: ‘In August we saw a much-larger-than-expected volume of favourable coverage in response to our announcements about the future of the Solicitors Indemnity Fund, our approach to keeping of the roll, practising fees and SQE2 results. Later in the quarter, there was substantial positive coverage when we published sexual misconduct guidance.’

In the final quarter of 2021/22, the SRA worked out that fewer than 10% of news reports about it were negative, while more than 30% were positive. While we grant that we are not (quite) the only publication covering the solicitors’ regulator, the Gazette must account for a fair proportion of that coverage. You’re welcome, SRA.

 

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