From September 2026, the International Conference of Legal Regulators (ICLR) will become a membership association providing a global platform for legal regulators to share insights, develop solutions to common challenges and strengthen professional connections throughout the year.
Hook Tangaza has been working with host regulators in different jurisdictions to organise the annual conference and produce the monthly newsletter that keeps the community connected between events. We are now taking the next step to develop this into a formal membership association. For those who choose to join, this will include a new website hosting a wide range of resources, an opportunity to set up and engage in thematic groups to exchange ideas on topics on an ongoing basis, an ideas exchange and periodic webinars and drop in sessions, as well as the annual conference.
Legal regulators in different jurisdictions are, to a striking degree, working on the same problems. The same technologies are arriving in their markets and the same shifts in business models are testing the boundaries of what they authorise. New international standards land on much the same timetable, and the same questions about competence, client money and consumer confidence surface in much the same order.
The institutional responses, however, remain almost entirely national. Most regulators are working through problems that many of their peers have already worked through, without the benefit of knowing which of the available answers solved – or exacerbated – the problem. Closing that gap is no longer a matter of needing more information but of having somewhere to ask candid questions of people who have already tried something.
Since 2012, ICLR has brought together the people who lead regulatory, disciplinary and educational functions in the legal sector globally, annually. Ministries of Justice, Attorneys General departments, court agencies, independent regulators, law societies and bar associations from more than forty jurisdictions across all five continents have participated in its conferences from San Francisco to Hong Kong, Edinburgh to Melbourne. Once described by a regular delegate as “summer camp for lawyer regulators”, ICLR gives individuals running regulatory functions the opportunity to have open and honest discussions with their peers in a safe space.
ICLR 2026: London, 28–30 September
This year’s conference takes place at the Park Plaza Victoria in London from 28th – 30th September marking the 10th anniversary of ICLR’s first London conference. This year’s theme is Mind the Gap.
Three topics run through the programme:
- Regulatory discourse: interventions, supervision of client finances, anti-money laundering;
- Education and training: changing competence requirements, modernising assessment, technology in training;
- Change and innovation: new business models, shifting consumer demand, the deployment of technology.
Part of the agenda is about how regulators manage risk and part is about the regulator’s role in enabling the legal sector to evolve in order to remain competitive whilst better serving access to justice and the public interest. These are the gaps we will be discussing. Places are now very limited, registration is open at iclrlondon2026.org.
Hook Tangaza works with legal sector regulators worldwide on supervisory design, governance, AML/CFT capability, education and competence reform, and risk analysis. More on our regulation and compliance work here.
