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Recent case law suggests a reluctance on the part of the courts to allow the Chinese wall within law firms as a device to prevent conflicts of interest. This paper examines the recent case law and considers whether the courts' reasoning is justified. The author suggests that the validity of the Chinese wall should be considered on a case‐by‐case basis rather than by a near irrefutable presumption against it He then sets out a series of safeguards which might create an effective Chinese wall.

In recent years there has been a series of decisions considering the extent to which the self‐regidatory organisations (SROs) are amenable to judicial review. This briefing surveys those decision and highlights the restrictive nature of judicial review of SROs. The author discusses the reasons for non‐intervention by the courts and suggests that the courts may be paying too much deference to self‐regulation.

The Financial Services and Markets Bill is an impressive attempt to revisit the field of financial regulation and to replace the existing regulatory structure with a single regulator with coherent powers. There is a danger, from the legal perspective, that the Dill is too widely drawn, vesting the new single regulator with too wide a discretion to formulate rules and policies which themselves will not be susceptible to legislative scrutiny.