Regulation

Complaining about a barrister’s conduct in a written ruling is usually a better way of a judge highlighting concerns than contacting their head of chambers or regulator, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has said. His Honour Judge Shanks said his experience was that neither of those methods achieved anything.

The Legal Services Board has handed out a public censure for the first time, after finding that the Law Society had governance arrangements in place that could have interfered with the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The Law Society’s actions undermined “the public interest in effective regulation of legal services”.

A payment processor has taken the place of conveyancers in handling the finances on completion day in what has been claimed to be the UK’s first fully digital mortgage settlement. It could spell the end to clients waiting with the removal van in the afternoon for money to be transferred between lawyers.

The Bar Standards Board has decided that the 12-month period for work-based learning – pupillages and other formats that may develop – should remain but made changes to the way vocational and on-the-job training is delivered. It will also peg the minimum pupillage award – currently £12,000 – to figures from the Living Wage Foundation, currently just over £17,000 for London.

A sole practitioner who claimed more than twice the criminal costs he was entitled to after successfully defending a client has been fined £2,000 by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. He said he had “very little experience of criminal defence work”.

The High Court has rejected the appeal of a solicitor struck off for his involvement with the failed Axiom Legal Financing Fund after it found the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal was entitled to proceed with hearing the case in his absence. It found his claims about his ill-health were really an attempt to stop the proceedings altogether.

A barrister whose treatment of a client and a solicitor “could be characterised as bullying behaviour” has been reprimanded and fined. However, a Bar disciplinary tribunal said the fine would have been more severe were it not for the “exceptional mitigating circumstances in this case”.

Commercial and chancery practitioners are by far the most satisfied practitioners at the Bar, while those in crime and family the least, new research published today by the Bar Council has reported. While only 30% of family and 34% of criminal barristers said they were able to balance their home and work lives, the figure was 61% for commercial and chancery.

Trainee solicitors at the top-paying firms receive more than three times those at the bottom, while the pay gap in earnings of female and black trainees has widened since the minimum salary was scrapped, a survey has found.

A solicitor who acted for jailed UKIP MEP Ashley Mote, jailed in 2015 for fraudulently claiming £400,000 in European Parliament expenses, has failed to overturn his striking off at the High Court. He had been struck off after allowing around £60,000 of European Parliament funds to be used for various legal matters Mr Mote was facing which did not relate to his work as an MEP.