Regulation

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has issued 23 waivers from its rules under a new policy – 18 of which have gone to sole practitioner law firms which together make up another firm’s partnership.

Solicitors’ firms are moving their whole practices or conveyancing departments to the oversight of the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, it has emerged.

There should be specific protection against victimisation for compliance officers who report their solicitors to their regulator, the Law Society has argued.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has won a £700,000 award from the government to accelerate the ideas of law firms and others to improve access to justice using AI.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has strongly criticised the “insufficient” plans of the second largest probate regulator to introduce new requirements on publishing prices.

The world when the Legal Services Act was drawn up “simply does not exist in the same way now” and the inherent tensions in the Act are becoming “increasingly apparent”.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority needs to be more rigorous pursuing “bent” solicitors “taking advantage” of the immigration system, according to a former judge.

A solicitor whose conduct “was about as dishonest as it could get” – and left the profession to pick up a £175,000 bill to compensate a vulnerable client – has been struck off.

The former president of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, and former Attorney General Dominic Grieve are on the advisory panel for an independent review of legal regulation.

Publishing prices is likely to encourage small businesses that are wary of the cost of legal advice to start using lawyers, new research has suggested.