One year Pulse Survey: SRA corporate strategy benchmarking – what drives confidence and trust in legal services?

29 May 2026

Overview of the research

Research background

In November 2023, we published our Corporate Strategy 2023–26, with the mission to drive confidence and trust in legal services.

Following publication, we commissioned Thinks Insight & Strategy (Thinks) to conduct independent research to better understand how we can best achieve our mission, as well as benchmark views so we can assess progress over the life of the corporate strategy.

The results of this work were published in October 2024. In 2025, Thinks conducted a shorter piece of research for us – a one-year-on Pulse Survey – to see how things had changed. Surveys were live between 8 May and 2 July 2025, one year on from the original survey in 2024.

It should be noted that this was ahead of the publication of the Legal Service Board's review of the SRA's regulation of SSB Group Limited in October 2025, which was critical of our handling of issues at the firm.

Results from the pulse study confirm that confidence and trust in legal services remained stable and relatively high for most stakeholders. There was, however, a decrease among consumers of legal services, and the proportion of consumers who believed legal services are well regulated.

There was no clear evidence of what might be driving this change, and low awareness of media coverage or specific events or issues within the legal services sector.

Elsie Lauchlan, Director at Thinks Insight and Strategy said: 'The results from the 2025 pulse study painted a generally positive picture, with confidence and trust in legal services remaining consistent for the majority of audiences. High professional standards and qualifications remained fundamental to this.'

'There is no clear evidence from this research as to what was driving changes in consumer sentiment relating to legal services. However, we do know from our own self-funded independent research that public optimism about the UK is at its lowest point since our annual tracking began six years ago. Yet, despite this broader shift, we found that seven in ten consumers still believed legal services to be well regulated.'

Although there has been a slight rise in 'opinion leaders' who believe legal services are well regulated (up 4 percentage points to 64%), fewer are positive about the SRA's activity increasing confidence and trust in legal services (32% agreed; down 13 percentage points).