Compliance & Regulation

Chambers are focusing their efforts to improve racial diversity on recruitment rather than progression or retention, a Bar Council report has found.

There have been “numerous scenarios” where banks have stopped solicitors working under government licences for those subject to UK sanctions by refusing to process transactions, the SRA has said.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is now investigating 29 cases where law firms might be involved in SLAPPs, it revealed yesterday as it issued a warning notice over such abusive litigation.

Seven apprentices at the first large law firm to run the training scheme – which takes six years and includes a law degree – have qualified as solicitors.

A law firm owner who admitted having “massive holes” in her knowledge of the accounts rules has been fined £5,000 after letting a £41,000 shortfall build up on client account.

A solicitor whose incompetence enabled the transfer of an elderly man’s property to fraudsters for no consideration has been struck off, even although it was a single incident in a 19-year career.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has used its enhanced fining power for the first time, imposing a £15,000 fine on a solicitor who failed clients subject to deputyship orders.

A barrister convicted of multiple child sex offences last year and jailed for three and a half years has now been disbarred. He did not know the children he had contacted were not real.

MPs have backed giving the Solicitors Regulation Authority unlimited fining powers in cases of economic crime, as well as a new regulatory objective for the Legal Services Act.

The Bar Council has taken the unusual step of criticising the Bar Standards Board for its “unacceptable and inexcusable” handling of a complaint against Dinah Rose KC.