Legal Compliance
Compliance Services and Consulting
Compliance is a key aspect of any regulated business, but it should not merely be seen as a box-ticking exercise to appease regulators.
Our specialist team deliver risk and compliance advisory and consultancy services focusing on regulatory and quality standard compliance. We can help provide assurance by removing the burden of compliance on your firm.
Risk and Compliance Services for Law Firms
We have a range of Risk and Compliance services we can offer to law firms provided by our team of experts who have extensive experience working in regulated sectors and advising businesses on various quality and accreditation schemes.
We are also in the unique position of being able to provide and utilise our Risk and Compliance system, so that it can be used to record and manage a firm’s compliance and quality related data.
Risk and Compliance software solutions
Anti-money laundering compliance
Law firms can be attractive targets to channel funds so it’s important you have the necessary anti-money laundering controls in place within your firm to help prevent this. Our firm AML review can assist with this by:
- A detailed review of AML policies and procedures.
- A review of your internal governance arrangements around your AML framework.
- A review of your training needs analysis process and establish a corresponding training programme.
- An assessment of the criteria you use for transaction monitoring.
Regulatory Compliance Review (SRA)
Our Compliance Review offers firms a service that will analyse their current compliance framework and helps them identify what’s needed to achieve the desired compliance culture within their firm. This includes:
- Reviewing your firm’s governance arrangements and assessing the effectiveness in mitigating compliance risk
- Reviewing all manuals and documentation to ensure that they cover all relevant rules and regulations affecting your business
- Identifying all relevant compliance risks and ensuring that you have a robust system of controls in place
- Testing the implementation of your Policies and Procedures to ensure that controls are operating effectively and as intended
Accreditations (CQS/LEXCEL)
Many regulated businesses see the commercial benefits of going beyond their basic compliance obligations, which is why they choose to become accredited to various recognised quality schemes.
This service is available for the CQS and LEXCEL accreditations . It considers the requirements and best practice of the accreditation and identifies what is needed for a firm to achieve/keep the accreditation. The service includes:
- Reviewing your firm’s governance arrangements and assessing the effectiveness in mitigating compliance risk
- Reviewing all manuals and documentation to ensure that they cover all relevant rules and regulations affecting your business
- Identifying all relevant compliance risks and ensuring that you have a robust system of controls in place
- Carry out a gap analysis in your compliance framework are identified
Compliance audits
Audits can be time consuming, but proactively reviewing your business cannot only keep the regulator happy but also provide you with valuable insight you may have never known, including unidentified complaints, training gaps and governance inaccuracies.
Law firms are required under the SRA Code of Conduct to manage their files effectively and efficiently. We can help remove this burden on Heads of Department with our audit service, allowing them to spend more time on valuable fee-earning work as well as providing reassurance with an unbiased second pair of eyes.
Our service provides regular quality/compliance reviews using best practice, risk-based and accreditation-oriented question sets which can be tailored to your firm.
Complaints management
We provide a range of complaint handling services across the legal sector and have the expertise to deal with complaints ranging from simple investigations to complex appeals, helping remove the burden faced by your firm.
Our Complaints Management Service considers the SRAs Standards and Regulations, as well as the Legal Ombudsman best practice for complaint responses, helping to resolve them efficiently and cost effectively.
Governance
Our suite of Policies and Precedents cover the core areas needed for effective management of a firm and compliance with the regulations. These can also be reviewed and tailored by our team to fit your firms operating processes under our Governance products.
Our Policies and Precedents cover the following areas:
- Guidance for COLP and COFAs
- General Management
- Client Care and File Management
- Legal and Regulatory Compliance
- Anti-Money Laundering
- Human Resources
- Information Technology and Data Protection
