The Solicitors Regulation Authority Board is meeting this week to consider a two-year action plan to help ensure consumers have the information they need when they use legal services.
The plan includes the launch of new consumer-facing website called Legal Choices which will provide a one-stop shop of factual advice and opportunities for consumers to have their say on legal services.
The SRA’s new action plan ‘Empowering consumers – the SRA’s approach’ will run from September 2013 through to August 2015.
It aims to help people to take more control of the decisions they take when they face legal issues, understand risks and know what to do if things go wrong.
The SRA’s Director of Inclusion, Mehrunnisa Lalani, said: "This is the second stage of our work to empower consumers in the legal services market.
“All too often we hear about confusion that people face when they need to access a legal service, and the perception that many big decisions are effectively left to chance if consumers don’t have the tools they need to make the right choices.
"Over the past 18 months we have listened to what people have told us they need. Often this amounts simply to getting the right information, in the right format, at the right time.
"The Legal Choices website is a good example of this, with legal regulators coming together for the first time to provide a resource that looks through the consumer’s eyes at the legal services market, and helps them to help people cut a path through advice and guidance that is already out there, and then find exactly what they need."
