Social media at the SRA

7 March 2016

How we use social media

We use social media networks to share information about our work regulating solicitors in England and Wales. We aim to reach a broad range of audiences, including solicitors and other SRA-regulated individuals, their clients and members of the general public.

We welcome feedback about our work—and we monitor social media in order to improve our understanding of our stakeholders' views. For official correspondence and for all other business with us, please use our mainstream customer contact channels (mySRA, telephone, email, post, DX, fax) (see Contacting us, below); we cannot guarantee to respond if you contact us using social media alone.

Our use of social media is evolving. We will be clear and open with you about significant changes in our social media activities or their purpose. Check this web page (www.sra.org.uk/social) for updates.

Networks

You can find us on four networks.

Twitter

Follow @sra_solicitors for news and other timely information on a wide range of subjects. We post alerts about bogus solicitors, practice closures notices, SRA news releases, Handbook version notes and live coverage from selected events and speaking engagements.

LinkedIn

Our LinkedIn careers page is a key element of our recruitment marketing efforts, listing job vacancies that are that open to external applicants. Our LinkedIn company updates are news releases, event announcements and links to new publications.

YouTube

Our YouTube channel offers a free library of more than 40 webinars presented by SRA subject matter experts, along with clips of key speeches and messages to the solicitors' profession. Tips for clients of solicitors are featured in our Consumer videos playlist.

Facebook

Follow us on Facebook for news and alerts that we hope will be of help to solicitors' clients. Practice closure notices, bogus firm alerts and warnings about other scams are among the consumer-focused items appearing on our timeline. We encourage Facebook users to share our content with friends who are in the process of instructing a solicitor.

What to expect from us

The Legal Services Act 2007 created a set of objectives for legal services regulators; they inform all our work, including our social media activities.

  • Protect and promote the public interest
  • Support the constitutional principle of the rule of law
  • Improve access to justice
  • Protect and promote the interests of consumers
  • Promote competition in the provision of services
  • Encourage an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession
  • Increase public understanding of the citizens' legal rights and duties

More specifically, we use social media to share information about our work and to gauge the views of others about issues and developments that are integral to our regulatory mission.

As a rule, we do not directly offer guidance on regulatory compliance and related matters via social media, although we habitually use Twitter and LinkedIn to share guidance, on-demand webinars and other compliance resources that we have published elsewhere—for example, on our website.

Likewise, we do not usually respond to requests sent via social media for information about the regulatory and disciplinary record of individuals we regulate.

When you interact or engage with us on social media networks, you are dealing in the first instance with members of staff of the SRA External Affairs Directorate. We will not normally identify ourselves individually in posts and messages, unless this is strictly necessary or adds meaning to the communication.

Contacting us

While we strongly encourage feedback about our work and are keen to hear your views on the regulation of legal services more broadly, we do not use social media for the purposes of official correspondence or to conduct regulatory business.

To contact us for these purposes, please use our mainstream interaction and contact channels (mySRA, telephone, email, post, DX, fax), which we operate in line with published service levels. For details, visit www.sra.org.uk/contactus.


Please use www.sra.org.uk/social to link to this page.