The Legal Services Board (LSB) regulates all the legal regulators including IPReg.

The LSB approves:

• the rules and regulations imposed by IPReg; and
• the practice fees

The LSB consults with the regulators before issuing its own rules and regulations.

In 2015, the Legal Services Board ran a survey on the costs of regulation. It became apparent that the funding for the Legal Services Board and for the Legal Ombudsman was not fully understood. All legal regulators, including IPReg, pay a levy to the Legal Services Board to fund the operations both of the Legal Services Board and also the Legal Ombudsman. The levy is based on the numbers of regulated persons and is not connected with use. Thus the levy to the Legal Ombudsman does not reflect the “business to business” nature of IP legal services which excludes the vast majority of clients from recourse to the Legal Ombudsman. The LSB levy is paid by all the authorised regulators and forms part of the practice fee.

Details of the levy can be found on the IPReg Financials section of our website. We have now adjusted our budget format to show the payment of the levy more prominently.

The LSB website can be accessed via this link. 

The Legal Services Consumer Panel website can be accessed via this link 

An article written by the LSB and published in the CIPA Journal (January 2011), about the role of IPReg, and a copy can be found here.