Written by In-house solicitors are often treated as commercial advisers whose job is to help the organisation get things done. But their professional duties go further. They are expected to uphold the rule of law, protect public trust and report serious wrongdoing, even where doing so may put them in conflict with the employer that pays them.
Publication snapshot
- In-house solicitors owe duties to their employer organisation, but also wider public-interest duties as regulated professionals.
- The SRA guidance expects in-house solicitors to raise and, where necessary, escalate concerns about wrongdoing.
- The SRA is now a prescribed person for some protected disclosures about wrongdoing by solicitors or law firms.
- The practical problem remains retaliation risk, career damage, isolation and uncertainty about privilege and confidentiality.
- The reform question is whether individual solicitors are being asked to carry risks that should be addressed structurally by employers, regulators and whistleblowing law.
Why this matters
The role of the in-house solicitor is still too often misunderstood. In many organisations, legal advice is treated as an internal service function: useful when it enables commercial objectives, inconvenient when it warns that the organisation is crossing a legal, ethical or regulatory line.
That view is incomplete. In-house solicitors are not merely employees with legal expertise. They are regulated professionals. Their duties include independence, honesty, integrity, public trust and the rule of law. Those duties do not disappear because the client is also the employer.
The SRA’s guidance recognises that this position is difficult. It expects in-house solicitors to raise material concerns internally, escalate where necessary, consider external reporting, and avoid becoming complicit in wrongdoing. That is right in principle. The harder question is whether the system gives them enough protection to do it in practice.
The ethical tightrope
The in-house solicitor’s difficulty begins with dual status. They are both adviser and employee. They owe duties to their client organisation, including confidentiality and acting in the client’s best interests. But they also owe wider duties to the public interest and the administration of justice.
The tension becomes acute where the concern involves senior management, entrenched practices, regulatory reporting, public safety, misuse of confidentiality, suppression of evidence or conduct that may mislead a court, regulator or public authority.
In those circumstances, the solicitor may be expected to tell the organisation what it does not want to hear. That may include telling senior people that their preferred course is unlawful, that an internal investigation needs independence, that a disclosure must be made, or that the solicitor cannot participate in a course of conduct.
The pressure points
The solicitor must protect the organisation’s confidential information unless disclosure is required or permitted by law.
The solicitor must not allow employment pressure, loyalty or fear to override professional judgment.
Concerns may need to move beyond the instructing team to senior legal management, the board or an external authority.
The solicitor must not help facilitate wrongdoing or suppress exposure of it through drafting, advice or management decisions.
This is not a theoretical problem. The Post Office scandal has sharpened public scrutiny of lawyers who act within large organisations and of the danger that legal functions become part of institutional defence rather than institutional accountability.
The systemic problem: guidance is not support
The SRA’s guidance tells solicitors that they may need to consider whether they can continue working for an organisation where wrongdoing persists. As a statement of professional obligation, that is unsurprising. As a practical answer to organisational misconduct, it is incomplete.
Leaving a role is not a simple ethical gesture. It may mean loss of income, loss of reputation, career stagnation, future employability risk and the stress of explaining why a senior legal role ended. For solicitors with mortgages, caring responsibilities or limited alternative opportunities, resignation can be professionally and financially devastating.
This is why the problem cannot be placed only on the individual solicitor. If organisations create cultures where legal challenge is punished, and regulators respond mainly by telling solicitors to act independently, the burden falls on the person least able to absorb the consequences.
How silence becomes institutional risk
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A solicitor identifies legal, regulatory or ethical risk within the organisation.
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The concern is downplayed, delayed or reframed as being “not commercial enough”.
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The solicitor faces pressure to soften advice, avoid escalation or protect senior decision-makers.
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The wrongdoing persists, while the solicitor becomes exposed to professional, employment and reputational risk.
The reality of retaliation
The formal language of whistleblowing protection can give a false sense of security. A protected disclosure may protect a worker from dismissal or detriment in law, but it does not prevent an employer from making the worker’s position difficult in practice.
Retaliation can be overt: disciplinary action, dismissal, demotion or exclusion from key work. It can also be subtle: loss of influence, career stagnation, being labelled obstructive, exclusion from meetings, performance management, or reputational briefing.
For in-house solicitors, the risk is sharper because their professional identity is tied to judgment, trust and discretion. Once senior management sees the lawyer as a threat rather than a safeguard, the legal function can become isolated from the decisions it is supposed to influence.
Whistleblowing law may protect workers from dismissal or detriment if the statutory requirements are met.
The solicitor may still face career damage, stress, isolation, legal uncertainty and the burden of proving retaliation after the event.
That is why the support framework matters. A solicitor who raises serious concerns needs more than a reminder of professional principles. They need access to independent advice, safe escalation routes, clear protection against retaliation and confidence that the regulator will not leave them exposed.
A hollow call to action?
The SRA’s guidance is clearer than silence. It recognises that in-house solicitors have a role in supporting the rule of law, transparency and accountability. It also now sits within a stronger framework because the SRA has become a prescribed person for some protected disclosures about wrongdoing by solicitors or law firms.
But that development does not solve the whole problem. It is one route, not a complete safety net. It does not remove questions about privilege, confidentiality, employment retaliation, board-level pressure, internal investigations, or the professional consequences of acting too late or too cautiously.
The danger is that the guidance places responsibility where it is easiest to locate: on the individual solicitor. It tells them to raise, escalate, report, record, balance, consider and, if necessary, resign. It says less about how employers should be sanctioned when they punish lawyers for doing exactly that.
The reform route
If the SRA is serious about empowering in-house solicitors to fulfil their ethical obligations, guidance must be matched by structural support. The problem is not only a lack of knowledge. It is fear, hierarchy and the imbalance between the individual solicitor and the organisation.
Support reforms
- Provide clearer confidential routes for in-house solicitors seeking early ethical and regulatory advice.
- Publish practical examples showing how privilege, confidentiality and external reporting should be handled.
- Develop independent support mechanisms for solicitors facing retaliation after raising concerns.
- Make the SRA’s prescribed-person role clear, accessible and separate from ordinary complaint-handling confusion.
- Improve signposting to specialist whistleblowing, employment and professional-conduct advice.
Employer reforms
- Require clear internal reporting lines for legal and regulatory concerns, including board escalation routes.
- Protect in-house lawyers from being penalised for giving unwelcome but proper legal advice.
- Use genuinely independent investigation arrangements where senior management is implicated.
- Record how serious legal concerns are considered, escalated and resolved.
- Treat retaliation against legal staff as a governance failure, not merely an HR dispute.
The strongest reform would recognise that in-house solicitors are not only advisers to organisations. They are also part of the legal system’s early warning structure. If they cannot speak safely, the system loses one of its most important safeguards.
The closing point: independence needs protection
The SRA is right to remind in-house solicitors that professional duties do not stop at the organisation’s door. A solicitor who knowingly facilitates wrongdoing, suppresses exposure of it, or turns a blind eye to serious misconduct cannot hide behind employment status.
But the regulator must also confront the reality of power. In-house solicitors who challenge wrongdoing often do so from inside the very organisation that can damage their career. That is not a small practical difficulty. It is the central issue.
Guidance can describe the ethical tightrope. It cannot, by itself, make it safe to walk. Unless the SRA, employers and whistleblowing framework provide stronger support, many in-house solicitors will continue to face the same impossible choice: protect the public interest, or protect their career.