Feeling the heat: the rising burden of professional conduct rules

While heatwaves are starting to mark the beginning of the British summer, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has been steadily turning up the heat on non-financial misconduct within the profession.

This article traces the expansion of professional conduct rules from their traditional focus on competence and financial probity to a much broader remit encompassing non-financial misconduct.

Where it all began

Historically, the SRA’s regulatory focus was on financial misconduct and dishonesty, for example, breaches of the Accounts Rules or the misuse of client money.

However, non-financial misconduct has always been within scope by virtue of the SRA’s overarching Principles to act with integrity and the obligation to uphold trust and confidence in the profession. These obligations, or, as the SRA puts it, ‘fundamental tenets of ethical behaviour’, provide the legal basis for regulatory intervention even when there’s no financial wrongdoing involved.

The expansion of regulatory reach

In recent years, workplace issues such as sexual misconduct, bullying and harassment, and criminal conduct in a solicitor’s private life have moved into focus for the SRA. The regulator has shifted from treating these issues as HR or employment law matters to categorising them as high-risk issues with serious sanctions attached, including striking off, lengthy suspensions and costs orders.

This begs the question of how far the reach of professional regulation extends, particularly in relation to the personal lives of those who are regulated.

Testing the limits

In Beckwith v SRA [2020], the High Court warned the SRA against holding solicitors out as ‘paragons of virtue’. So while solicitors may be held to high moral standards, those standards must be grounded in professional rules and must be sufficiently certain and predictable.

The nexus test

In response to Beckwith and the surge in complaints, the SRA published Sexual Misconduct guidance in 2022 to help clarify the boundary between professional and personal life and where the line between the two might be drawn.

In practice, the key question is whether there’s sufficient nexus between the conduct in question and the solicitor’s practice. The closer the behaviour is to their professional role, the more likely the SRA will view it as within regulatory remit.

From principles back to rules?

The following year saw the introduction of a new duty to treat colleagues fairly and with respect, alongside a prohibition on bullying, harassment and discrimination, together with a linked obligation on managers to challenge such behaviour. As a result, there was a shift away from relying on high-level principles alone to regulate conduct.

What began as a reactive response has now evolved into a core strand of the SRA’s strategy, driven by concerns about workplace culture, public confidence in the profession and the systematic risks posed by non-financial misconduct.

What next?

Cases such as the Post Office Horizon scandal have ensured non-financial misconduct remains in the spotlight. This is reflected in the SRA’s 2025-26 Business Plan, in which the maintenance of high professional standards features as the first strategic priority.

In parallel, the SRA has proposed the introduction of mandatory annual ethics training, which would require solicitors to take part in structured discussions of ethical dilemmas each year, combined with formal record-keeping requirements to evidence engagement.

Proactive regulation or a compliance burden?

By mandating engagement with ethics and requiring it to be evidenced, the SRA is moving beyond regulating misconduct after the event to seeking to proactively shape how solicitors identify and respond to ethical dilemmas.

While it’s not a return to collecting CPD points, it inevitably places an additional burden on solicitors, which is likely to be felt more by those in smaller firms or working in-house.

How to navigate the changing landscape

The proposals have received a mixed reception. Some commentators have welcomed the reforms as addressing gaps in practice, noting that technical knowledge and expertise has historically been the focus at the expense of ethical awareness. Others have expressed concern that the value will depend on how well they are implemented in practice, so they don’t become another layer of procedural compliance.

What’s clear, however, is that ethics, culture and behaviour must be treated as core operational risks and, as a result, embedded into supervision, training and day-to-day decision-making. Ethics and ethical judgement should never be treated as a box-ticking compliance exercise.

In a regulatory climate where the heat is steadily rising, those who fail to engage in a meaningful way risk being left exposed.