Compliance & Regulation

The market for professional indemnity insurance is likely to continue to worsen but future premium rises should not be at the average of 17% seen this autumn, a leading broker has predicted.

A solicitor and her partner who defrauded a law firm and the Legal Aid Agency of almost £95,000 in a translation scam will have to repay just £5,584, a court decided last week.

A solicitor who loaned £3.4m from clients’ estates and private lenders to other clients and “known individuals” – a broking operation he had carried out for decades – has been struck off.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal “fell into serious error” in finding no case to answer against a solicitor accused of making a fraudulent costs claim, the High Court has ruled.

A “reckless” solicitor who admitted registering properties with the wrong purchase price and failing to carry out anti-money laundering checks has agreed to leave the profession.

The SRA has come under fire for how it deals with sole practitioners and solicitors at small firms, with the chair of the Society of Black Lawyers saying they were seen as “easy targets”.

A solicitor who admitted that he “had gone too far and had done too much” by practising while suspended has been struck off, while his supervising partner has been suspended.

Members of the public still do not “fully understand” the role of the Solicitors Regulation Authority and leads to complaints about its service, the organisation’s independent reviewer has found.

A former partner at Womble Bond Dickinson has been fined for using the firm’s client account as a banking facility, as has a current partner who unwittingly took over after he left.

A solicitor who moved client funds around different accounts to hide the money he was taking for himself – and caused pay-outs from the SRA Compensation Fund – has been struck off.