Compliance & Regulation

A criminal defence solicitor who said he certified two lasting powers of attorney “as a favour” for an elderly client has been fined £6,000 for failing to make the necessary checks.

A solicitor has admitted manifest incompetence in failing to advise a 92-year-old client to refuse a £60,000 engagement ring and £35,000 car in part-payment of the property he was selling.

The Legal Services Board is to undertake a “first-principles analysis” of the list of reserved legal activities to consider “potential alternative configurations”.

Stronger rules on how clients are informed about their right to complain, and ensuring verbal expressions of dissatisfaction are treated as complaints, are set to be introduced next year.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is going to have to wait until the end of the Post Office inquiry before it can take formal disciplinary action against any lawyers involved in the scandal.

There are only 15 barristers on Trustpilot but their pages are viewed 4,000 times a day by consumers, showing the opportunity for the Bar, a webinar heard last week.

A greater focus on professional ethics among law students and qualified lawyers, with stronger supervision by regulators, is needed to uphold the rule of law, the Legal Services Board has said.

A solicitor accused of not having a firm-wide anti-money laundering risk assessment in place and lying about it to the SRA, has been cleared by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

The SRA risks acting “unfairly and arbitrarily” if it refers almost all cases relating to sexual misconduct to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, a leading regulatory lawyer has warned.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has called on regulators to consider how information providers give to consumers can be standardised, with complaints and conveyancing prices particular concerns.