The Legal Services Board podcast

In March 2021, the Legal Services Board (LSB) published a strategy to reshape legal services. Since then, we’ve developed the reshaping legal services podcast series to document progress across the sector against the strategy's challenges and identify ways for stakeholders to collaborate and deliver on reshaping legal services to better meet society's needs.

In this episode, Dr Helen Phillips, Chair of the LSB, shares her reflections as she prepares to step down from the role at the end of her term of office.

In March 2021, the Legal Services Board published its 10-year sector-wide strategy to reshape legal services to better meet society’s needs.  Since publishing the strategy, the LSB has been developing plans to curate the strategy, in other words, engage the sector to collaborate and deliver on the Strategy. As part of this, the LSB has developed this Reshaping Legal Services microsite which will be a platform for stakeholders to showcase their work and how it aligns with the strategy.  

Alongside this, we have also developed the RLS podcast series to document progress against the strategy’s challenges across the sector and identify ways for stakeholders to collaborate and deliver to reshape legal services to better meet society’s needs through fairer outcomes, stronger confidence and better services.   

The second episode of the Reshaping Legal Services podcast looks at how we can achieve fairer outcomes for consumers of legal services, which falls under the fairer outcomes and stronger confidence themes of the strategy. In this episode, we sit down with Matthew Maxwell-Scott, Executive Director of ACSO, to talk about ACSO’s work to amplify consumer voices and the role regulation can play in empowering consumers to make more informed choices. We then speak with Aisling O’Connell, Regulatory Policy Manager at the LSB, about our recent research on vulnerable consumers, the role professionals can play to raise awareness and provide practical support to reduce vulnerability and the importance of collaboration in achieving our shared objectives.  

David Abbott, Panel member at the LSCP, is our third guest and he talks to us about the access to justice gap faced by consumers, how service providers and regulators can take action and the LSCP’s new research on ethnic minority consumers. We finish the episode with Robin Geddes, Regulatory Policy Manager at LSB, who talks us through the LSB’s work on empowering consumers and the role of public legal education. 

In March 2021, the Legal Services Board published its 10-year sector-wide strategy to reshape legal services to better meet society’s needs.  Since publishing the strategy, the LSB has been developing plans to curate the strategy, in other words, engage the sector to collaborate and deliver on the Strategy. As part of this, the LSB has developed a Reshaping Legal Services microsite which will be a platform for stakeholders to showcase their work and how it aligns with the strategy.  

Alongside this, we have also developed the RLS podcast series to document progress against the strategy’s challenges across the sector and identify ways for stakeholders to collaborate and deliver to reshape legal services to better meet society’s needs through fairer outcomes, stronger confidence and better services.   

The first episode of the Reshaping Legal Services podcast looks at how we can dismantle barriers to a diverse and inclusive profession, which falls under the ‘fairer outcomes’ theme of the strategy. In this episode, we interview Debbie Foster, Professor of Employment Relations and Diversity at Cardiff Business School and Chair of Lawyers with Disabilities, Law Society, Jane Burton, who tell us a bit more about their joint research project called ‘Legally Disabled, which produces valuable research on the career experiences of disabled people in the legal profession. Then in the latter part of this episode, we speak with Elizabeth Rimmer, Chief Executive of LawCare, who tells us about LawCare’s work to improve mental health in the legal services sector and where she sees the future of legal services. 

You can find out more about Legally Disabled here: http://legallydisabled.com/  

You can follow LawCare on Twitter: @LawCareLtd.