How do you check that a lawyer is regulated?
Find out which regulator they answer to, then look them up on that regulator's own register. There is no single list.
- Solicitors — the SRA's register, "Find a solicitor".
- Chartered legal executives and CILEX practitioners — CILEx Regulation's directory. It holds 7,727 people. It has no per-person link: you have to search it.
- Barristers — the Bar Standards Board's register.
- The firm itself — a firm can be regulated by the SRA, by CILEx Regulation, or by nobody at all. Only 22 firms are CILEX-authorised entities.
Two things worth knowing that the registers do not put in front of you. First, being on a register is not the same as being covered if things go wrong: across the 22 CILEX-authorised firms, 23 area authorisations are insured but fall outside the compensation arrangements — mostly wills and trusts work. Second, a disciplinary finding usually will not show against somebody's name, because 53 of the 58 published decisions ended in exclusion, which removes them from the register altogether.