Appointments to the Legal Services Board

The Lord Chancellor, in consultation with the Lord Chief Justice, has appointed Jemima Coleman and Michael Smyth QC to the Legal Services Board for 3 years from 18 April 2016 and agreed the reappointment of Terence Babbs for 18 months from the 1 April 2016. The Legal Services Board (LSB) is the oversight regulator for legal services in England and Wales. It was created by the Legal Services Act 2007 and came into being on 1 January 2009 taking on the majority of its statutory powers on 1 January 2010. It is independent of government and the legal profession and oversees 10 separate bodies, the approved regulators, which themselves regulate lawyers practising throughout the jurisdiction.

The LSB also oversees the Office for Legal Complaints and its administration of the Legal Ombudsman scheme that resolves complaints about lawyers.

Michael Smyth CBE QC (Hon)

Michael has been a practicing solicitor for 35 years with the majority of this time spent at Clifford Chance advising both business and private clients. He has recently stood down, after a decade, as the Chair of the International Senior Lawyers Project (a charity established to put practicing and retired lawyers into the field to support rule of law projects). Michael is a Member of the Advisory Board of both Project Associates and of Wesleyan Assurance Society, a Member of the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on National Records and Archives and the Chair of Community Links, a social enterprise which provides social welfare law services. He has recently joined the Board of the Fundraising Regulator.

Jemima Coleman

Jemima is a senior employment lawyer at Herbert Smith Freehills LLP with experience of cross-border transactions and High Court and Tribunal litigation. Jemima is on her firm’s Corporate Governance Advisory Team and has chaired various working parties of the Employment Lawyers Association’s Legislative and Policy Committee. She is on the Steering Committee of the 30% Club Professional Services Firms Initiative and the Women Lawyers Network. She was on the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion committee. She is a trustee and governor of Highgate School.

Terry Babbs (Lay Member)

Until August 2012, Terry Babbs was the Group Ethical Trading Director for Tesco Stores Ltd. He previously held the roles of International Trading Law and Technical Director, and Head of Legal, Policy and Consumer Affairs at Tesco. Prior to this he was Head of Trading Standards at Leicestershire County Council. Between 2004 and 2011 Terry was involved in establishing and running Sedex Information Exchange Ltd and Global Social Compliance Programme, companies which bring together business competitors to deliver better outcomes for their customers.

Terry is currently Chairman of Partner Africa, a social enterprise which works across 32 African and Near East countries to promote ethical and socially responsible business practices and help producers to access international supply chains. He is also a member of the NSF Consulting Group, part of NSF International, which brings together independent practitioners, regulators, scientists and academics working in food safety around the world and chairs its global food fraud programme.He is also a member of the Investment Committee of Oxfam's Enterprise Development Programme. The programme provides business focused solutions to help entrepreneurs in the developing world through an intelligent mix of loans and grants to SME's.