Compliance & Regulation

A newly qualified solicitor who asked a colleague to hide a client file so as to cover up her lack of work on an HM Land Registry application, has been struck off.

The SRA Compensation Fund is to pay out £30m to clients of collapsed Sheffield-based PM Law, it has emerged. It has contributed to the 78% increase in funding required.

A senior solicitor has been reprimanded and banned from being a compliance officer for finance and administration for a year over multiple rule breaches.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has been asked to explain why it is requiring only notification of impending mergers and acquisitions, rather than its approval.

An experienced criminal law barrister has been reprimanded and fined for an “outburst of racist language” when talking to a trainee police officer.

A solicitor who had a second job at the Home Office while a trainee and used it to access the visa application files of clients and family members has been suspended.

A solicitor has been struck off for creating letters to mislead both his opposite number and his own firm in a bid to cover up his failure to acknowledge service.

Reports to the Solicitors Regulation Authority about solicitors’ competence rose by 48% to over 4,000 last year, the regulator has revealed.

A solicitor who was suspended for a year after she was found to have been “grossly negligent” has failed in a bid to get conditions removed from her practising certificate.

A barrister who should have learnt from a previous disciplinary offence that his rudeness “demeans” himself and could damage “the Bar as a whole” has been fined.