In the High Court judgment of Carter Ruck v SRA [2026] EWHC 2416 (KB), which was handed down on 21 September 2026, Mr Justice Butcher ruled that the SRA is not entitled to require solicitors to produce material which is subject to legal professional privilege in response to section 44B production notices.

Mr Justice Butcher reached the following conclusion at [155]::

“I have thus concluded that s. 44B does not permit the SRA to require the production of documents subject to the client’s unwaived LPP. At best, from the SRA’s point of view, its terms might be said to be equivocal. That is not enough to override the fundamental right of LPP. It is not “compellingly clear ” that there is an override of LPP implied into s. 44B. The SRA has not surmounted the “high threshold” for a necessary implication. There is no authority which binds this Court to reach the conclusion that there is such an implication. But this Court is bound to find that there is no “non infringement ” or permissible infringement exception to LPP in the case of documents required by a legal regulator “

The judgment related to production notices served under section 44B of the Solicitors Act 1974. However the principle that the SRA is not entitled to require production of documents subject to a client’s unwaived LPP applies equally to documents and information obtained under the Codes of Conduct. In other words the SRA cannot now rely on privileged material supplied by a solicitor to the SRA under the requirement to self report serious breaches of the regulatory arrangements, or the obligations under rules 7.3 and 7.4 of the Code of Conduct for Solicitors and rules 3.2 and 3.3 of the Code of Conduct for firms to co-operate with the SRA and provide “full and accurate explanations, information and documents in response to any request or requirement.”

That has an effect on material already supplied to the SRA, which is currently being used by the SRA for the purpose of disciplinary proceedings. The privilege belongs to the client, not the solicitor, and if the client has not waived the privilege the SRA should not now be using the privileged material in disciplinary proceedings, and cannot disclose the material to an Adjudicator or the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

A solicitor facing disciplinary proceedings needs to decide whether the client has waived the privilege. If the client supplies the information to the SRA or the solicitor supplies the information in response to a complaint by a client, there is likely to be a good argument that the privilege has been waived and can be relied on by the SRA.

If the privileged material has been supplied without the client’s consent, and if the client has not subsequently consented to supply of the material, the privilege will not have been waived.

The SRA’s response to an objection to the continuation of disciplinary proceedings on the basis of the Carter Ruck decision will therefore depend on the facts of the particular case, and the SRA is likely to consider each case on a case by case basis.

If there is privileged material and no waiver, the solicitor needs to consider whether to apply for an adjournment or stay pending any appeal by the SRA against the Carter Ruck decision, whether to take a more hostile approach and apply to strike out the proceedings as an abuse or whether to make use of the current climate by negotiating a settlement of the disciplinary proceedings.

The Carter Ruck decision also opens up the possibility of an appeal out of time to historic disciplinary decisions based on unwaived LPP material.

Geoffrey Williams KC and Nigel West of Russell Cooke specialise in the defence of SRA proceedings and can advise solicitors on the available options arising from the Carter Ruck judgment.