Regulation

A solicitor has been “severely reprimanded” by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) after he compounded an error made by his firm 15 years previously when it failed to follow instructions over a property transfer. It is not a sanction that is seen any more but the SRA said it was available when the events took place a decade ago.

Legal regulators have urged the Legal Services Board to use its review of the internal governance rules to give them greater independence from their representative bodies. The Solicitors Regulation Authority said the rewrite of the rules should allow it to become a “separate legal entity” from the Law Society.

The principal solicitor of controversial Bolton personal injury firm Asons is to appear before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal over multiple allegations, including the payment of illegal referral fees and false costs claims, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has confirmed.

A partner at a City law firm who said a client had signed documents in his presence when she was actually abroad has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. It said the solicitor had been “pushed into a corner”, taking over a conveyancing matter where completion was fixed and there was “pressure to meet the date”.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority received nearly 300 reports of personal injury (PI) law firms either paying illegal referral fees or being involved in cold-calling, it has revealed. This is in the context of there being only 768 ‘specialist’ law firms, which the Solicitors Regulation Authority defines as generating at least half their turnover from PI work.

State-school education solicitors are far more likely to operate in criminal law than corporate, new figures published by the Solicitors Regulation Authority have shown. It also said that one-third of partners were women, although it was 29% for firms of 50 or more partners – both figures showing progress in recent years.

Making membership of the Inns of Court optional for barristers would disadvantage those with the least “social capital”, the Bar Council has warned. It strongly defended the role of the Inns, the minimum 12-month period for pupillages, and compulsory Inns of Court dinners for students.

The High Court has ordered the Solicitors Regulation Authority to make a fresh judgment of a would-be solicitor’s character and suitability to join the profession after finding that it had wrongly denied her an oral hearing to explain an issue that it decided showed dishonesty.

The next chief executive of the Law Society could earn £300,000 after the job was finally advertised – more than a year since the last one quit. The post comes with a salary of up to £230,000, a bonus of up to 30% and a defined contribution pension scheme.

Trust corporations wanting to act as property and affairs deputies for incapacitated people must be regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to gain immediate approval, the Court of Protection has said.