It is responsible for regulating the professional conduct of more than 125,000 solicitors and other authorised individuals at more than 11,000 firms, as well as those working in-house at private and public sector organisations.

In a report by Sir David Clementi[5] of all legal services in England and Wales, he recommended that professional bodies holding both regulatory and representative responsibilities should separate those roles.

[7] Unfortunately, rather than display contrition and humility, the SRA's chair and chief executive, Anna Bradley and Paul Philip respectively, have responded with arrogance and contempt, each refusing to accept the outcome of the independent investigation.

By 1907, the Society possessed a statutory disciplinary committee, and was empowered to investigate solicitors' accounts and to issue annual practising certificates.

The current Chief Executive, Paul Philip, is a career regulator who previously served the General Medical Council.

This arrangement has produced the anomaly that in England and Wales, unlike most common law jurisdictions, solicitors are admitted by non-lawyers and receive admission certificates signed by a regulatory bureaucrat who is not a lawyer or a judge.

The Law Society remains the approved regulator, although following the Legal Services Act 2007 a new body, the Legal Services Board (chaired by Sir Michael Pitt, a government appointee) oversees all the approved regulators including the Bar Council, which has also divested its regulatory functions into the Bar Standards Board.

In 2012, the SRA's Supervision function handled a total of 6,289 issues, while the Forensic Investigations Unit began work on 530 new cases.

Alternative Business Structures (ABSs)[26] were introduced on 6 October 2011, and the SRA began accepting applications for licences on 3 January 2012.

As part of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, the Government introduced a ban on the payment of referral fees in personal injury cases.

[28] Solicitors could no longer pay firms that passed them details of those who had suffered injuries as the Government felt this played a significant part in creating and maintaining the alleged compensation culture.

The SRA was tasked with drawing up the rules to outlaw the payments[29] and police the profession in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice and Financial Conduct Authority.

In July 2011 the SRA announced that it would be launching a formal inquiry into the role played by solicitors in the News International phone hacking scandal.