In-House Solicitors and the SRA: Practising Certificates, Client Money and the Code 3.6 Training Duty

In-house solicitors are regulated on exactly the same terms as everyone else — "irrespective of your role or the environment or organisation in which you work", as the SRA Code of Conduct puts it. What differs is that almost none of the regulatory architecture around them assumes an employer who is not a law firm, and the Code is silent on the one problem in-house lawyers actually face.

This guide works through the position for solicitors employed in organisations that are not SRA-authorised, and the obligations that fall on the organisations employing them. It is written from the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors, RELs and RFLs in effect from 11 April 2025, the SRA Authorisation of Individuals Regulations, and the SRA's guidance on when a practising certificate is needed.

Does an in-house solicitor need a practising certificate?

The SRA's guidance runs as a four-question test:

1. Are you carrying on any reserved legal activities as defined in section 12 of the Legal Services Act 2007, or supervising an unqualified person carrying on such activities?
2. Does the section 88 Solicitors Act 1974 exemption apply?
3. Are you employed under section 1A of the Solicitors Act 1974?
4. Are you held out as a solicitor?

The six reserved legal activities, from section 12 and Schedule 2, are: exercising a right of audience before the higher courts; the conduct of litigation; reserved instrument activities; probate activities; notarial activities; and the administration of oaths.

Question 3 is the one most misread. Section 1A applies to employment by a person qualified to act as a solicitor, a partnership with a qualified member, a recognised body, or another authorised person entitled to provide reserved legal services. The SRA's guidance states the test squarely: "The determining factor is whether you are employed in connection with the provision of legal services; if so, you are deemed to be practising as a solicitor and must therefore hold a practising certificate, regardless of whether you are held out as a solicitor."

But a corporate employer that is not authorised under the Legal Services Act does not appear in that section 1A list. So for a great many in-house roles, the practising certificate question turns on questions 1 and 4 rather than on employment itself.

Holding out is broader than calling yourself a solicitor

Under section 1 of the Solicitors Act you are not "qualified to act as a solicitor" unless you are admitted, on the roll, and hold a valid practising certificate. If you are described as a solicitor or attorney you need a certificate, subject to three exceptions — and the SRA's warning goes further:

"Even if you do not describe yourself as a solicitor or attorney in express terms, your conduct and/or use of certain names, titles or descriptions may result in you implicitly holding yourself out."

For an employer, that makes the job title and the email signature a regulatory decision rather than an HR one. Section 21 makes it an offence for an unqualified person wilfully to pretend to be qualified.

What an in-house solicitor can and cannot do

Regulation 9.1 of the Authorisation of Individuals Regulations sets the baseline: a solicitor with a current practising certificate "is entitled to carry on all reserved legal activities except notarial activities", subject to a list of exceptions.

Four of those exceptions matter in-house:

• Client money (Code 4.3) — "You do not personally hold client money", save as permitted under the Authorisation of Individuals Regulations, "unless you work in an authorised body, or in an organisation of a kind prescribed under this rule". An in-house solicitor in an ordinary company is not in an authorised body, so holding client money is off the table. Where money is held, the general duties in Code 4.1 and 4.2 to account for financial benefits and safeguard money and assets still apply. Our guide to the SRA Accounts Rules sets out the regime that applies where a firm does hold it
• Immigration work (regulations 9.5(c) and 9.6) — permitted "as an employee, for your employer or work colleagues", and it "must be undertaken by you personally and not by another person on your or your employer's behalf"
• Regulated claims management (regulation 9.8) — only through a body authorised to carry on reserved legal activities, or with an FCA permission or FSMA exemption for non-reserved work
• Regulated financial services (regulation 9.9) — only "through an authorised body"

There is also a trap in Code 5.4 for anyone whose employer has a legal-sounding name: you must not be a "manager, employee, member or interest holder" of a business whose name includes "solicitors", or which describes its work in a way suggesting it is a solicitors' firm, "unless it is an authorised body".

On indemnity insurance, the only paragraph in the Code is 5.6, and it is narrow: it applies where a solicitor or REL carries on reserved legal activities "for the public or a section of the public in a non-commercial body", which must then take out and maintain insurance. Whether the compulsory professional indemnity regime reaches in-house practice more generally is not addressed in the Code, the Regulations or the practising certificate guidance.

Who the client is

The Code's introduction answers this directly. Your client "in an in house context will generally include your employer and may include other persons or groups within or outside your employer organisation". And it is unambiguous about where responsibility sits: "You are personally accountable for compliance with this Code."

One scope point worth knowing: Code paragraphs 8.1 to 8.11, which cover client information and publicity, "apply only when you are providing your services to the public or a section of the public". Most in-house work is outside that, with one exception to watch — Code 8.10(c) prevents representing a non-authorised employer as SRA-regulated in public-facing work.

The competence obligations, and the one that falls on the employer

Two short paragraphs carry the continuing competence duty:

• Code 3.3 — "You maintain your competence to carry out your role and keep your professional knowledge and skills up to date."
• Code 7.1 — "You keep up to date with and follow the law and regulation governing the way you work."

Then the provision in-house legal leads should read twice, because it imposes a training obligation about other people:

Code 3.6 — "You ensure that the individuals you manage are competent to carry out their role, and keep their professional knowledge and skills, as well as understanding of their legal, ethical and regulatory obligations, up to date."

A head of legal who manages paralegals, contract managers or compliance staff is personally responsible under 3.6 for their competence and for their understanding of legal, ethical and regulatory obligations being current. That is a development plan with a named owner, not a general aspiration. Code 3.5 adds that where you supervise or manage others providing legal services you "remain accountable for the work carried out through them" and must "effectively supervise work being done for clients".

Note also that supervising an unqualified person carrying on reserved legal activities is itself a practising certificate trigger under question 1 of the SRA's test.

Reporting obligations survive the employment relationship

Code 7.6 requires prompt notification to the SRA of charges, convictions, cautions, insolvency events and material changes. Code 7.7 requires you to report facts you reasonably believe are capable of amounting to a serious breach — expressly "including you". Code 7.9 protects a good-faith reporter from detrimental treatment, and Code 7.12 allows the notification duty to be satisfied by informing a firm's COLP or COFA, which an unauthorised employer will not have.

That last point is a practical gap: the convenient internal route the Code contemplates does not exist in most in-house settings, so the obligation runs directly to the SRA.

What the Code does not say — and it is the thing that matters most

Having read the Code in full, two silences are worth naming.

There is no paragraph on independence. No provision in the Code uses or addresses the concept, despite independence being the defining pressure of in-house practice.

There is no provision on what to do when your employer's interests conflict with your professional duties. The nearest are Code 3.1, which requires you to act only on instructions from the client or a properly authorised person and to protect the client's best interests where you have authority to act without instructions; Code 6.1, "You do not act if there is an own interest conflict or a significant risk of such a conflict"; and Code 6.5, which refers to confidential information held by "you or your business or employer".

None of those answers the actual question. The SRA deals with it in separate guidance on conflicts, independence and confidentiality for in-house solicitors rather than in the Code itself — which means an in-house team auditing itself against the Code alone will find nothing on the risk it is most exposed to.

Three things to check

First, whether every solicitor in the team needs a practising certificate on the SRA's four-question test, and whether job titles and signatures amount to holding out.

Second, whether your legal lead has a documented development plan for the non-solicitors they manage, covering legal, ethical and regulatory obligations. Code 3.6 makes that personal to them. It is the same evidential problem running through the SRA's continuing competence consultation, and structured CPD programmes are the practical way to meet it.

Third, that nobody is relying on a COLP or COFA route for reporting that your organisation does not have.

Sources and limits: written from the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors, RELs and RFLs (in effect from 11 April 2025, made 16 December 2024), the SRA Authorisation of Individuals Regulations, and the SRA guidance "When do I need a practising certificate?" (updated 25 November 2019), read in October 2026. Regulation 10 of the Authorisation of Individuals Regulations — including the client money permission at 10.2(b)(vii) — the SRA Glossary definitions, the SRA Accounts Rules, the indemnity insurance rules and the SRA's separate in-house conflicts and independence guidance were not read, and will qualify points above. The practising certificate guidance dates from 2019 and the Code from 2025, so confirm the guidance has not been superseded. General information about published rules, not legal advice.