Background Regulation of authorised legal businesses Section 46 – Reconciling different rules
120.This section sets out what the rules under section 41 must include as regards provision for reconciling different sets of regulatory rules. The Scottish Ministers may by regulations make further provision about such regulatory conflicts (but only if requested to do so by the Lord President, a category 1 regulator or the independent advisory panel of the Commission). Before making a request, the requestor must first consult each category 1 regulator, the independent advisory panel of the Commission and any other persons or bodies it considers appropriate). Except where the Lord President is the requester, the requester must secure the Lord President’s agreement to the making of the request, Subsections (8) and (9) set out the documents that must accompany a request, which the requester must publish as soon as practicable after making a request.
121.This section (which should be read with the regulatory objectives) places an obligation on category 1 regulators to minimise duplication or unnecessary difference in the rules it makes. For example, many authorised legal businesses are already regulated by the Law Society as incorporated practices(7) in terms of section 34 of the 1980 Act. While a wider range of legal businesses will now require to be regulated, in making ALB rules, the Law Society will be required to consider how best to avoid duplicating those rules unnecessarily in relation to incorporated practices. To assist them in that regard, section 48 gives the Law Society discretion as to which powers it uses to create the rules in question and schedule 1 adjusts section 34 of the 1980 Act to facilitate that.