Compliance & Regulation

Only a single body policing anti-money laundering supervision across the UK legal sector will deliver “the step change in effectiveness that is needed”, a campaign group has argued.

New requirements on legal regulators to strengthen ethical standards from the start of lawyers’ careers have been proposed today.

A male barrister who harassed a woman at his chambers’ Christmas party both physically and verbally has been suspended from practice for three months.

The SRA’s plans to reform consumer protection arrangements demonstrate its instinct to “overregulate” the profession, City solicitors have claimed.

A high-profile licensed conveyancer has been thrown out of the profession for not telling 300 apprentices and students that his training academy had lost its official accreditation.

A fee-earner has been banned for misleading her firm into thinking that her membership of the Law Society’s mental health accreditation scheme had been renewed.

A solicitor has been ordered to pay the SRA £20,000 in costs for his “unreasonable and indeed vexatious and disruptive conduct” of litigation against it.

Two law firms that between them retained £425,000 of client money for many years have been rebuked as charity Support Through Court called on solicitors to donate small residual balances.

The chair of the Legal Services Board, Alan Kershaw, has stood down from the role less than halfway through his term, citing personal considerations.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has completed its investigation into the collapse of SSB Law and issued disciplinary notices to “a number of individuals”.