Announcement of new public appointments
Appointment of 2 non-lay members and reappointment of a lay member to the Legal Services Board.
The Lord Chancellor, in consultation with the Lord Chief Justice, has appointed Jemima Coleman and Michael Smyth QC to the Legal Services Board for 3 years from 18 April 2016 and agreed the reappointment of Terence Babbs for 18 months from the 1 April 2016.
The Legal Services Board (LSB) is the oversight regulator for legal services in England and Wales. It was created by the Legal Services Act 2007 and came into being on 1 January 2009 taking on the majority of its statutory powers on 1 January 2010.
It is independent of government and the legal profession and oversees 10 separate bodies, the approved regulators, which themselves regulate lawyers practising throughout the jurisdiction.
The LSB also oversees the Office for Legal Complaints and its administration of the Legal Ombudsman scheme that resolves complaints about lawyers.
Michael Smyth CBE QC (Hon)
Michael has been a practicing solicitor for 35 years with the majority of this time spent at Clifford Chance advising both business and private clients. He has recently stood down, after a decade, as the Chair of the International Senior Lawyers Project (a charity established to put practicing and retired lawyers into the field to support rule of law projects). Michael is a Member of the Advisory Board of both Project Associates and of Wesleyan Assurance Society, a Member of the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on National Records and Archives and the Chair of Community Links, a social enterprise which provides social welfare law services. He has recently joined the Board of the Fundraising Regulator.
Jemima Coleman
Jemima is a senior employment lawyer at Herbert Smith Freehills LLP with experience of cross-border transactions and High Court and Tribunal litigation. Jemima is on her firm’s Corporate Governance Advisory Team and has chaired various working parties of the Employment Lawyers Association’s Legislative and Policy Committee. She is on the Steering Committee of the 30% Club Professional Services Firms Initiative and the Women Lawyers Network. She was on the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion committee. She is a trustee and governor of Highgate School.
Both appointments are subject to security clearance.