Compliance & Regulation

Paul Philip is to retire from the Solicitors Regulation Authority towards the end of 2025 after nearly 12 years as chief executive, it announced this morning.

Now is the time for the SRA to take “decisive steps” towards scrapping solicitors’ client accounts, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said.

Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds has apologised for referring to himself as a solicitor but said it was not “a huge deal”, as Reform UK pledged to bring a private prosecution against him.

A solicitor has been fined for letting her firm run mortgage mis-selling claims when she had “no experience or expertise” and made multiple errors as a result.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has reopened its investigation into business secretary Jonathan Reynolds describing himself as a solicitor.

Both solicitors and barristers involved in the Post Office scandal could start to face disciplinary action by this summer, their regulators have declared.

There should be a “fundamental alteration” in the way the legal sector approaches consumer vulnerability, taking an opt-out, rather than opt-in, approach, a study for the SRA has argued.

A solicitor has been urged to use a six-month suspension to separate his legal work from the counselling support he provides to sex offender clients, after mixing them led to rule breaches.

The new statutory duty on lawyers to promote the “prevention and detection of economic crime” must not trigger an “over-zealous” response by the SRA, the Law Society has warned.

There needs to be a new early disposal mechanism for SLAPPs, academics have said, describing existing anti-SLAPP provisions as “a false dawn that will not address the problem”.