Many of the City's leading law firms are delaying their preparations for fundamental changes to the way firms are regulated, as they wait for amended guidelines from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).

Only two of the UK's 10 largest law firms by revenue have confirmed that they have started to make changes in preparation for outcomes-focused regulation (OFR), which will see the SRA's detailed rulebook replaced with an approach founded on broader principles, rather than prescriptive rules, from October this year.

Instead, many firms are holding back while they push for the SRA to make a number of changes to its final handbook, due to be published in April, which will apply to both traditional law firms and alternative business structures.

Key criticisms from firms include the strict terms outlined in the draft handbook for a new compliance role that each firm must have in place by March 2012, as well as overly stringent self-reporting requirements.

Firms argue that current requirements for the compliance officer for legal practice (CoLP) role and self reporting rules are too broad with some claiming it is still unclear how much time and money they will have to spend preparing for the shift in regulation.

Clifford Chance is the only top 10 City firm which currently knows who it will name as its CoLP and its compliance officer for finance and administration, with general counsel and executive partner Chris Perrin (pictured) set to take the former role and chief financial officer Stephen Purse the latter.

Meanwhile, of the top 10, only Slaughter and May has confirmed that it has actively begun training its fee earners for OFR, with the magic circle firm rolling out a two-part course on the basics of principles-based regulation practices this month.

Slaughters head of compliance Sarah de Gay said: "Because the new system focuses on outcomes rather than bright-line rules, this puts more responsibility on individual fee earners, even in large firms with established compliance procedures, to engage with conduct and ethics issues."

Ashurst director of risk management Chris Vigrass said: "It's a catch-22 for the SRA as with the CoLP's current liabilities it would have to be a managing or senior partner, because they are the only ones with that wide-ranging power, but the SRA wants to be in contact with the person who is best-placed to speak about risk matters and that would be the risk manager."

An SRA spokesperson said compliance will be based on "securing the right outcomes rather than slavish compliance with detailed rules" and said it does not anticipate additional costs for firms in the long run.

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