The Sole Practitioners Group was formed in 1992, on a self help basis, as a direct result of the terrible publicity being given to Sole Practitioners in the Legal Press, and also as a result of the Paper issued by the Law Society Council called "The Cost of Default".

At the Law Society's Annual General Meeting in July 1992, Angela Deacon, (now a Law Society Council Member) and a number of Sole Practitioners attended and complained of the way the Sole Practitioners were being treated. The Law Society was supposed to be looking after the interest of all Solicitors.

In the Cost of Default Consultative Paper, a real emphasis was placed on the amount of money being paid from the Compensation Fund in respect of defaulting Sole Practitioners, but there was no publicity about a far greater sum being paid from the Solicitors Indemnity Fund as a result of dishonesty of partners. No research had gone into these figures as to how much in fact had been paid out of the Solicitors Indemnity Fund related to claims concerning dishonest partners. It is quite ironic now, in view of the horrendous increase in premiums paid to the Solicitors Indemnity Fund and to the shortfall that has to be met by all Solicitors, that proper data was not available at that time. There was also genuine concern that the Council of the Law Society were in fact striving to make sole practice impossible.

Directly after the 1992 Annual General Meeting, Sole Practitioners who had attended the A.G.M arranged a separate meeting group organised by Mr Arnold Rosen who became the Sole Practitioners Group first Chairman. We had never met before and came from all parts of the U.K. The Group was just formed on an ad hoc basis, but the driving force without any doubt for the birth of the group was Arnold Rosen.

The names and addresses of all Sole Practitioners were obtained from the Law Society and a questionnaire was sent out to all of them. In July 1994, the Sole Practitioners Group became a Law Society Group, Grant funding from the Society has been received since then and we were allocated a permanent Secretary and contact, from amongst Law Society staff. Juliet Heasman was our first secretary and, on her retirement in 2003, Stephanie Nunn took over these duties. From 1994, all Sole Practitioners (now numbering some 4,200) who were members of the Law Society were automatically members of SPG unless they wished to opt out.

In 2002, following rearrangements to Law Society Governance, the Representation Board of the Law Society persuaded Council that Groups should no longer be part of the Law Society and a new status of Recognised Group would be created. From 2005, instead of SPs being automatically members of the Group, they will have to opt in. Grant Funding is only being made for core activities, for example training, communicating with members and responding to consultations. Our name is now “Solicitor Sole Practitioners” rather than Sole Practitioners Group. We continue to communicate with members via the quarterly magazine, Solo, and this website.