Lost in translation – can regulators respond to the rise of in-house?

As the SRA prepares to overhaul its handbook, we ask whether its new focus on in-house will be enough to help tackle the ethical issues general counsel face.

‘There’s a serious danger of a regulator trying to regulate something that it doesn’t understand,’ says Kingfisher group general counsel (GC) and company secretary Clare Wardle. Her comment comes as the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) works on another overhaul of its handbook, halfway through a two-year review that will end in 2017, a process that has clear plans to be more inclusive of the in-house profession.