ABS, legal aid and unprecedented change — Ben Kemp on six months as Law Society of Scotland CEO

The Society’s CEO talks to Joshua King about building relationships, embracing change and upholding values.

Regulatory overhaul a decade in the making. Political upheaval at home and abroad. Meeting – and representing – a 13,000-strong profession as diverse in its work as in its membership and challenges. Oh, and the not-insignificant matter of overseeing the Law Society of Scotland’s multimillion-pound budget.

Most CEOs are faced with a teeming in-tray, of course. But Ben Kemp, who took over from interim Society CEO Kevin Lang a little over six months ago, is not most CEOs.

The Journal sat down with Ben shortly after he joined to discuss the legal landscape and the challenges ahead. Now, half a year on and hundreds of stakeholder meetings, staff introductions and public engagements later, the former general counsel (and interim CEO) of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries has a thorough understanding of what needs to be done.

Back in October, Ben said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. That an organisation’s inner workings and approach can enable – or consume – all the work that needs to be done. So, he’s rolled up his proverbials and set about meeting as many of his colleagues and peers as possible.

It’s a people business

“I love meeting people, right?” he says immediately. “And that’s good, because this is very much a people industry. I was actually wearing my non-executive hat last night in relation to the boating sector. And somebody said[…]we’re not in the industry of boats and sailing, we’re in the industry of people. And I kind of feel that about the legal profession. It’s all about the people.

“We spend a lot of time going out and meeting firms. I had a lovely early meeting with the Glasgow Bar Association, for example. And these sorts of meetings are really, really rich. And then there’s also our volunteers. And there’s the stakeholders as well because we’re part of a broader universe. Whether that’s the Lord President, whether that’s the SLCC [Scottish Legal Complaints Commission], whether that’s SLAB [Scottish Legal Aid Board]. All of these organisations where we have slightly different agendas and people will have slightly different views and attitudes to them.

“What we’re trying to do is have a really grown-up relationship that enables us to contribute and make the best impact we can.”

Change is gonna come

And what’s Ben hearing from all these meetings, all these different conversations with advocates of all kinds of clashing agendas? Change. That’s the theme of the moment. Just in the six months he’s been in post, the profession’s seen the end of ‘not proven’, the early work to implement the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2025 and a fraught (and ongoing) Holyrood election campaign in which the role of the Lord Advocate has been called into question.

“I think there’s a sense of unprecedented pace of change, and perhaps the extent of change too,” Ben says. “That resonates in different ways.” For instance, the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) – a recurring topic of conversation at the Society’s big firm lunches – is a big change affecting the legal sector. There is optimism and negativity, he says. “And there’s the change in the sense of political and geopolitical turbulence, the broader environment we’re living in, what that means in economic terms and human terms as well.

“There’s a worrying strain of a trend towards disrespect of our institutions and our values and our principles, the very things we took for granted. There are principles that underpin our democratic system, and we took that for granted, and suddenly those aren’t being respected in the way they were.

“Certainly, some of the criticisms we hear of the judiciary, for example, are really concerning. Not least because the judiciary is not in a position to effectively defend itself, and it is the independent check and balance of our system. We must respect the judiciary, and we must respect the role of lawyers in the legal system.”

Ben cites physical attacks and the threats of violence legal practitioners face around the globe, but also notes there are green shoots of hope in the overall conversation about the rule of law: “It’s brought these principles and values into a level of focus, right?”

Legal aid and ongoing review

That cautious optimism extends to a route out of Scotland’s legal aid crisis. It’s an issue which has kept the CEO busy into 2026 but there has been some progress, culminating in the Scottish Government’s recent funding commitment.

“The caveat to this is it’s quite an out-of-date system,” Ben says. “There’s an ongoing need to look at the system, but there was an acute, short-term need to address a very acute funding crisis. That’s what the 13% uplift is. We would have liked to have seen it sooner[…]but it’s progress.”

Similarly, the announcement that funding has been released for 40 legal aid training contracts is hopeful. But the biggest signal that the future of legal aid may be looking brighter is a mooted review mechanism. Instead of “lurching” from one crisis to another as the system is “neglected” between funding uplifts, a commitment to ongoing review can inject stability.

“We should ask the practitioners, of course, but certainly the response that we’ve received from our members has been to welcome this as positive progress.”

Implementation of ABS

Where there has been markedly less progress, or at least markedly slower progress, is in the introduction of Alternative Business Structures (ABS). This would allow non-lawyers to own, manage or invest in legal practices. South of the border, the implementation of ABS regulation has resulted in significant injections of private equity capital into the sector and reformed management. But the Law Society of Scotland will implement parallel changes more slowly: they not expected until at least 2027-28.

Ben acknowledges the strength of feeling from some quarters: “I have a lot of sympathy, actually, with that. I’ve been speaking on a reasonably regular basis to a number of the firms and individuals who’ve been calling for a faster pace of change and I understand the sense of frustration. I think they feel they’ve been waiting for this for some time. I understand that. We understand that. And we are committed to delivering ABS.

“I think it’s reasonably accepted that there is little purpose in implementing ABS under the 2010 legislation when that legislation is about to be amended by the 2025 legislation. And what’s more, the amendments of the 2025 legislation bring improvements to the ABS regime.”

He highlights that the amended legislation allows “more flexibility” in terms of independent ownership of firms, and that he wants members and firms to “benefit” from that flexibility.

“The second thing that we need to achieve, and we will achieve, is really to ensure that we deliver the full suite of regulatory reform and change in an orderly way. In that sense, what we don’t want to do is just do bits of the reform and then find out that we’re causing confusion. We don’t want to be tripping over each other.” After all, he says, the Society is also working to deliver the “groundbreaking” regulatory reform passed last year.

Hope for the future

Ben’s reflections on his first six months in post come the day after another record intake of solicitors at an admissions ceremony in Edinburgh. Attending the events and meeting Scotland’s newest solicitors is clearly a task the CEO relishes. An opportunity to be inspired once more about the profession.

“We had another bumper crop of new admittees. It’s quite an intense day, actually, a morning ceremony and then an afternoon ceremony. We have the time afterwards to mingle with the new solicitors and their families. The sense of joy and pride is really palpable and it’s exciting. It’s really exciting that what you’re looking at when you are at these ceremonies is the future of the solicitor profession.

“It reflects the information we have that the profession is in good health. While there’s a lot of change, the profession broadly is thriving.”