Then unlikes it
The Law Society’s official Twitter account has liked a tweet criticising the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) digital badge scheme.
Yesterday, the SRA unveiled a new digital logo that will eventually have to be displayed on the website of every regulated law firm in England and Wales. Using special software to “make sure only regulated firms can display it”, the badge (displayed below) is initially voluntary but will become a mandatory requirement sometime next year.
However, not everyone welcomed the news, with tech lawyer Neil Brown claiming on Twitter that the badge will now mean “all law firms will have to remotely embed third party content on their website, giving each site visitor’s IP address to the SRA”.
The @sra_solicitors has announced the details of its digital badge:https://t.co/YYIwXNCbGf
It’s as bad as I thought: all law firms have to remotely embed third party content on their website, giving each site visitor’s IP address to the SRA 🙁 pic.twitter.com/GGBC7gWU7r
— Neil Brown (@neil_neilzone) December 6, 2018
Brown’s critical post was subsequently liked by the Law Society’s official Twitter account:
Shortly after we brought the tweet to the SRA’s attention, the Law Society’s like mysteriously vanished.
Responding to Brown’s concerns, a spokesperson for the SRA told us:
“The SRA — and our development partner Yoshki — only have access to the data which is necessary to implement the digital badge service. So that we can address any improper use of the badge, and understand which firms have adopted the service, we can see which websites have implemented the badge. We can also see how many times the badge has been clicked — this is to help manage system performance and to gain insight into usage. We do not have access, record or store any additional data such as IP addresses or page navigation behaviour.”
The Law Society declined to comment.
