Regulation

The Legal Services Board has approved the new training regime for barristers that will open up four routes to qualification, including an apprenticeship, and strength regulatory oversight of the inns of court.

Now is not the “appropriate time” to embark on wholesale reform of the Legal Services Act, the Law Society has told the independent review into the regulation of legal services.

There is “room for review” of the legal regulation regime, made more urgent by the developments in technology, Lord Keen, the Ministry of Justice’s spokesman in the House of Lords, said yesterday.

The solicitor who headed Bolton personal injury firm Coops Law – which bought controversial practice Asons – has been suspended for the way it took on 6,000 files without clients’ permission.

A solicitor who was being groomed to take over a Liverpool law firm has been jailed for a £13,400 fraud, leaving his former boss with an “indescribable” feeling of betrayal.

A solicitor has been rebuked and fined after receiving a police caution for importing a class C drug, while a paralegal was rebuked and banned for lying about her qualifications on her CV.

While “deeply concerned” about the growth in fee-charging McKenzie Friends, the judiciary has failed to decide whether they should be banned – three years after consulting on doing just that.

A property solicitor who forged a Land Registry document as part of a dispute with a business partner has been jailed three years and eight months, along with her husband.

The Bar Council has called on barristers to take action over bullying by judges that they experience or witness, and is looking at a new approach to overcome reluctance to report incidents.

Support for diversity initiatives has come from the upper levels of the barristers’ profession, with a top QC warning of a “teststerone overdose” in the wake of criticism of how some men behave.