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Legal & Regulatory

Simplifying complex legal services through design-led transformation

Solicitors Regulation Authority – Digital Transformation

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is the independent regulatory body for solicitors in England and Wales. Its digital services had faced significant criticism, resulting in poor user experiences and high volumes of support calls. SRA needed to adopt a modern design system and apply a Government Digital Service (GDS) style approach to deliver more accessible, user-friendly, and compliant digital services.

Challenge

The SRA’s digital services were outdated, complex, and difficult to use for both citizens and legal professionals. Key challenges included:

  • A lack of organisational experience in user-centred design (UCD) and limited engagement with end users.
  • Internal stakeholders and business owners needed to adapt to new ways of working, including user research and iterative design.
  • Digital services relied on complex forms where input was shared across multiple roles within legal firms — yet the SRA had assumed that solicitors, rather than administrative staff, were completing most of the content.
  • Services for citizens to report on solicitors were not aligned with user needs, compliance expectations, or accessibility standards.

Our Approach

Apprilis worked with the SRA to embed user-centred design and establish a design system to underpin future services. Key actions included:

  • Stakeholder Engagement: Delivered presentations and workshops to senior stakeholders, building understanding of UCD principles and demonstrating benefits to the organisation.
  • Research Foundations: Developed hypotheses through interviews with internal teams handling citizen and professional user queries.
  • Prototyping and Testing: Built prototypes in partnership with the SRA web team and conducted research with both citizen and professional users.
  • Design System Development: Established a reusable HTML design system, aligned to GDS standards, enabling consistency across services.
  • Form Redesign: Created new online forms that reflected real-world workflows within legal firms, ensuring that administrative staff could complete large portions of forms while maintaining compliance requirements.

Impact

  • Introduced user-centred design practices to the SRA, gaining buy-in from stakeholders who had not previously engaged directly with users.
  • Delivered a new GDS-style design system that could be reused across future services.
  • Reduced complexity of online forms by aligning design with how work is distributed across solicitor firms.
  • Balanced compliance needs with user needs, ensuring services worked for both legal professionals and citizens.
  • Laid the foundation for a cultural shift in how the SRA designs, develops, and tests its services.

Key Outcomes

  • New digital forms simplified workflows for law firms and improved accessibility for citizens.
  • Reusable design system established, reducing future development costs and ensuring consistency.
  • Stakeholder understanding of user research and UCD significantly improved, embedding new practices in SRA delivery teams.

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