How firms gain and keep SRA authorisation — the reserved activities, firm categories and ongoing conditions that determine who may lawfully provide legal services.
A firm that gets authorisation wrong cannot lawfully trade, and one that loses it faces enforcement up to intervention itself. This chapter starts with the six reserved legal activities and the three categories of firm the SRA authorises, including recognised bodies and licensed bodies (ABSs). It then works through the conditions of authorised practice: the fit and proper person test, the COLP and COFA roles every firm must fill, the rules on holding client money, and the minimum professional indemnity insurance and run-off cover requirements. Finally it covers what the SRA can do at the authorisation stage and afterwards — grounds for refusal, the range of enforcement powers and intervention — before closing with the holding out problem that arises when non-solicitor staff are wrongly described as solicitors.
