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The Solicitors Regulation Authority is considering creating an ‘innovation space’, which it said would “help existing firms develop their businesses and encourage new firms to come into the market”. “An innovative legal sector is essential for delivering the efficient, affordable services the public needs,” it said.

A barrister who gained a pupillage by lying about her age, faking references and falsely claiming she had been an assistant district attorney in New York has been disbarred. Her scheme began to fall apart when a clerk at the chambers became suspicious that she was not 29 – she was actually in her late 40s.

Britain’s changing demographics will mean a huge shift in demand for legal services, towards managing the wealth and lives of the growing proportion of elderly people in the population, according to a study forecasting legal needs in 2025.

A rare bid by a solicitor to overturn an intervention into her practice has failed in the High Court, with the judge finding there was good reason to suspect dishonesty. The bulk of the allegations were that she employed a struck-off solicitor, while later dishonestly denying this.

A “significant majority” of the 250 or so responses to the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s consultation on the proposed Solicitors Qualifying Examination have expressed concerns about the plans, the regulator has acknowledged. Responses seen to date indicate a wall of opposition.

The initial findings from the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s ‘Question of trust’ exercise has found sharply divergent views about how to judge solicitors’ misconduct. More than 5,000 people took part in the consultation, which aims to determine the correct baseline of solicitors’ behaviour when making regulatory decisions.

In the event a large firm collapses, the Solicitors Regulation Authority expects the market to “gobble” up the pieces rather than leave it to the regulator to sort out, it has emerged. Chief executive Paul Philip said the question of whether the regulator could cope with a large firm going down had been discussed internally.

A solicitor who admitted he should never have qualified in the first place has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for misusing client money. Separately, it struck off a former sole practitioner who is serving four years in prison for fraud after stealing over £620,000.

The test aimed at weeding out students with little chance of passing the Bar professional training course has so far failed to achieve its objective because the pass mark has been set too low, the Bar Standards Board revealed yesterday.

The solicitor who safeguarded more than £100,000 of stolen cash for a charismatic conman posing as the Pope’s banker was last week spared jail after a judge heard the stress of the case has robbed her of the chance of conceiving a child.