A manual that is written once and then left alone is a liability, not a defence.
There is so much regulation falling on your shoulders when you are trying to run a legal practice. Keeping up to date, and then making sure your policies and procedures are updated in good time, is difficult and a constant worry. It is also the first thing an inspector asks to see.
We provide an Office Procedures Manual that is up to date and Lexcel, CQS and SQM compliant — and then we keep it up to date for you.
The SRA's own supervision data makes the case better than we can.
In the year to 5 April 2025 the SRA carried out 935 proactive engagements with firms, including 317 AML inspections by its proactive team and 516 desk-based reviews. Of the firms whose policies, controls and procedures were assessed, 311 were compliant, 382 were partially compliant and 130 were non-compliant.
Only 40% of firms were fully compliant!
The SRA's finding was not that firms had no policies. It was that policies "often lacked sufficient detail or were not followed in practice." The gap it keeps finding is between the document on the shelf and what the firm actually does on a day to day basis.
That is why this is a subscription and not a purchase.
The SRA has indicated its next thematic review will focus on regulation 19(3)(e) of the money laundering regulations — the requirement to monitor and manage compliance with your own policies, controls and procedures.
In other words: not "do you have a manual", but "can you show that you check whether anyone follows it".
The areas the SRA has repeatedly found missing or inadequately addressed in firms' policies are worth reading as a checklist against your own manual:
If your manual is silent on more than one of those, it is out of date.
All work is carried out remotely unless separately arranged.
This is a subscription with an annual charge. We are open to discussing spreading the payments.
| Basic package | Per annum |
|---|---|
| Office Procedures Manual — 1 fee-earner | £720 |
| Office Procedures Manual — 2 to 10 fee earners | £996 |
| Office Procedures Manual — 11 to 50 fee earners | £1,500 |
| Office Procedures Manual — over 50 fee earners | £1,992 |
| Additional costs | |
| Each additional office | £300 |
Prices quoted are net of VAT, which will be charged on top.
Our OPM is the result of many days of work to compile and then keep current, and it has been reviewed by independent auditors many times during accreditation audits. It is generic by nature — that is what makes it robust — and we then customise it to your practice from the information you give us.
You are not buying a template. You are buying a maintained document with an audit history behind it, and someone whose job it is to keep it right.
