Speeches by Russell.

“PM Law unexpectedly closed on 2 February, putting millions of pounds of client funds at risk. What risks were the SRA aware of prior to its closure?”

“In terms of the specific review about the information you had about PM Law, when will that be complete?”

“I would not disagree that it has potential.”

“The reality is that if you have an ongoing legal matter and you need ongoing support, you do not want to upset your lawyer by putting in a formal complaint about them, let alone complain to the SRA in any way, shape or form. My gut feeling is that if you did some survey work of the type that you have described of peopl…”

“I would not disagree that it has potential.”

“Turning to regulatory failure, you have previously apologised for not acting more quickly in recent high-profile collapses of law firms such as SSB Law. How is the SRA changing how it monitors and intervenes in firms in response to these failures?”

“Have you done a review of what complaints you had about this organisation? It bought a lot of firms quite rapidly, didn’t it? Did you have ongoing complaints about it?”

“It might be. It depends if the AI is hallucinating. It depends if the AI is trustworthy.”

“You were established in 2007, so the SRA is a relatively recent organisation, but not that new. I got the impression from what you just said that it was probably quite innovative work for you to speak to people who had experience of using legal services. Is that a fair characterisation?”

“What extent of protection do you think the public need from AI?”

“In theory, that all sounds fantastic. There are obviously significant problems with AI models hallucinating. There are significant problems with AI models having inbuilt biases, in respect of both race and sex. How does your current regulatory strategy look at that?”

“How is the SRA responding to allegations of mis-selling with regard to high-volume no win, no fee claims?”

“You just talked about Garfield AI, and that is an extremely interesting model. Do you feel that your regulatory framework works?”

“On that topic, I am a solicitor—I practised for nearly 14 years—and I have never heard of this website. I spent a year supervising in a law centre, and I am not aware of you having any contact with our law centre about this in that time. You say that you do a lot of promotional activity, but I was a local councillor fo…”

“What work, if any, are you doing on AI bias? How that will be managed within the sector?”

“You commented that the case for a review of the reserved legal activities is growing. Which reserved legal activities do you think need to change?”

“The reality is that if you have an ongoing legal matter and you need ongoing support, you do not want to upset your lawyer by putting in a formal complaint about them, let alone complain to the SRA in any way, shape or form. My gut feeling is that if you did some survey work of the type that you have described of peopl…”

“It might be. It depends if the AI is hallucinating. It depends if the AI is trustworthy.”

“What are you doing about costs? To put that comment into some context, I am a solicitor, but my experience of friends and family using law firms is that they have not received transparent information up front about costs and that they have been consistently surprised by the bills that they received. As a solicitor, I f…”

“Perhaps, but as a regulator, that is quite a big assumption.”