Compliance & Regulation
Ban for partner who sought intimate relationship with junior
A partner and registered foreign lawyer at the Brussels office of a major City law firm has been banned after admitting that he wanted a sexual relationship with a young female colleague.
More price transparency and bulk claims rise up SRA agenda
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to restart work on improving transparency for consumers, which could see firms having to publish their prices in more areas of law.
SRA finally getting to grips with aged investigations into solicitors
A major push to improve the quality and speed of the SRA’s investigation and enforcement work has significantly reduced the number of cases older than two years.
Nearly 500 law firms sanctioned for transparency failures
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has sanctioned 475 law firms over failures to comply with its transparency rules since they went live nearly six years ago.
Phil Shiner pleads guilty to legal aid fraud
Disgraced human rights lawyer Phil Shiner has pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud over legal aid applications for claims against British soldiers accused of ill treatment of Iraqi detainees.
Solicitors fined £30k for letting down property clients
Two solicitors have been fined more than £30,000 between them for not considering conflicts of interest and not acting in clients’ best interests.
LSB approves trebling of compensation fund contributions
The Legal Services Board has approved the big hike in contributions solicitors and firms have to make to the Compensation Fund just in time for the SRA to collect them.
Fewer complaints about barristers’ use of social media
The number of reports to the BSB about barristers’ use of social media has unexpectedly fallen but an increasing proportion relate to “controversial social and political issues”.
New equality duty will not impact cab-rank rule, says BSB chief
The Bar Standards Board’s controversial proposal for new equality rules will not affect the cab-rank rule and will not lead to quotas, its director general said yesterday.
“Firms could close” – Law Society joins opposition to SRA fines plan
The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s needs to rethink the “potentially unlawful, confusing and flawed” proposals to update its fining regime, the Law Society said yesterday.
Blog
The UK legal market is polarising – and the middle is disappearing
Consolidation and the boutique boom are not contradictory. They are the same market stretching apart at both ends – and it changes what your firm is worth, and to whom.
Conveyancing’s consistency problem is about pressure, not skills
When I qualified, a conveyancer had perhaps 10 or 12 plates to keep spinning. Today’s conveyancers have 20 or 30, and almost none of the room for error I had starting out.
The trade-off mid-sized firm partners think they’re making
Most of the partners I talk to describe the same tension. They want the firm to run efficiently and hit its numbers, but they also want their people to feel supported, developed and fairly treated.
Reports
Associates
