Compliance & Regulation

Individuals are set to pay 70% of the contributions to the Compensation Fund this year after a major policy shift by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The moment for structural reform of legal regulation “has arrived”, the Legal Services Consumer Panel says today in a call for a new single independent regulator.

Plans by the SRA to introduce compulsory three-hour ethics discussions for solicitors could cost the profession £100m, Birmingham Law Society has calculated.

Controversial solicitor Andrew Milne is to face the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal following his conviction earlier this year for stalking.

A motoring solicitor from Cheshire has been found guilty of impersonating a police officer after trying to get CCTV footage from a Nando’s restaurant.

A solicitor who returned to the profession after being jailed for four years for money laundering offences can now hold client money and act as a signatory on client account.

The former co-head of a City law firm’s yacht department and a veteran sole practitioner in Shropshire have been fined for using client accounts as a banking facility.

The Legal Services Board accepts responsibility for its role in “the failure” of the regulatory system to protect consumers, its chair said yesterday.

The oversight regulator of legal services has “lost its way” in recent years and a reset is needed while work begins on a wider review of regulation, a major report has concluded.

The Legal Services Board will focus “more sharply on fewer but more clearly defined priorities” in a three-year strategy to be launched later this year.