ABSTRACT
The United Kingdom government has formulated plans to reform the regulation of the legal professions of England and Wales, which is likely to lead to a significant erosion of self-regulation and increased commercialisation of professional legal services. The opening up of legal service markets to less restrained competition is an Intriguing prospect and one on which there is a limited but growing amount of evidence. The complaint about lower levels of quality can be met in part by the argument that a market based system may deliver somewhat rougher justice but it opens up the system to a wider range of litigants than, say. Many complaints are levelled at self-regulation. Professions routinely claim that self-regulation leads to higher levels of quality than can be gained from non-professional providers. The solicitors' profession is subject in various ways to external regulation. In spite of the doubts about self-regulation, the notion of professionalism, the handmaiden of self-regulation, has powerful cultural appeal.
