Regulation

The recent Supreme Court ruling that changed the test of dishonesty could cause delays and more hearings at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, its chief executive has warned. The prediction came as the tribunal’s 2018 budget of £2.8m – a fall of 2.5% on the current year – was ratified by the Legal Services Board.

The standard of proof in disciplinary cases involving barristers is being lowered to the balance of probabilities following a decision yesterday by the Bar Standards Board. Meanwhile, a former Labour minister has been appointed as the next chair of the board.

A solicitor has been struck off for dishonestly creating a false email that he sent to a law firm supervising his wife’s training contract, purporting to be from a Solicitors Regulation Authority authorisation officer. He claimed its purpose was to break a logjam preventing his wife from completing her training.

Two partners in a Cheshire law firm have been fined by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for their part in a failed ‘rare earth metal’ investment scheme. The firm processed transactions worth almost £2m for a company, based in Hong Kong, on behalf of a local businessman.

Two men who were part of an organised fraud network that conned solicitors and others out of over £300,000, as well as a man who tried to blackmail a law firm to pay over €10,000 for the return of data stolen from its systems, have been sent to prison.

A leading family law solicitor’s meeting with a potential client was for the purpose of conflicting him out of acting for the other side, the High Court has said as it rejected an application to stop him from doing just that. It said Raymond Tooth – famously nicknamed ‘Jaws’ – did not receive confidential or privileged information.

The more law firms find out about the planned Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), the less positive about it they become, expecting that they will have to top up the knowledge acquired under the new route to qualification, research has found. The poll also found widespread ignorance of the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s planned overhaul of training.

Leading legal aid law firm Duncan Lewis has been rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for deciding that the theft of client money was not a material breach that had to be reported to the regulator. Instead, it considered the misconduct to be an “internal matter”.

A solicitor who was jailed earlier this year for stealing more than £4m – and maybe as much as £10m – from her clients has been ordered to pay back the £1.9m within three months, or face a further eight years in prison. Meanwhile, a  “narcissistic” solicitor and district judge has received a suspended jail sentence after being convicted of fraud offences.

Partners who withheld cheques for a total of over £530,000, intended to pay the fees of barristers and experts, have been sanctioned by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. The architect of the scheme admitted that certain counsel were targeted as they would not kick up a fuss about payment being delayed.