Regulation

The Legal Services Board has dropped plans to probe why it is taking women and those from ethnic minorities so long to reach senior roles in the profession. It also rejected the Law Society’s claim that it is putting too much emphasis on promoting competition at the expense of the other regulatory objectives it is meant to uphold.

The former boss of the first accident management company to buy a law firm and become an alternative business structure has been rebuked and fined £7,500 by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for 11 accounts rule breaches and two breaches of the SRA principles.

The Law Society has scrapped external freedom of information (FoI) adjudications in favour of reviews by an “independent member of staff”, it has emerged. The society is not subject to the FoI Act, but until now it has dealt with requests as if it was covered by the Act, which meant having an independent reviewer.

An “shameless” woman who abused her position at solicitors’ firms to fraudulently gain more than £700,000 has been jailed for three and a half years. Caprice Chaneele Lindo, 40, of Bradford, pleaded guilty to money laundering and eight counts of fraud at a previous hearing.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is planning not only to combine its two law firm panels into one, but also to give all the legal work involved to a single firm, Legal Futures understands – leaving solicitors who have acted for decades as prosecutors out in the cold and questioning whether the regulator is taking the wrong approach.

City firm Clyde & Co has been fined £50,000 – the largest penalty issued against a law firm – and three of its partners £10,000 each for allowing its client account to be used as a banking facility and breaching anti-money laundering rules.

The Bar Standards Board is to launch a consultation this summer setting out the rule changes it needs to implement its fiercely contested training reforms, and among them will be a new route to qualification similar to solicitor apprenticeships.

The Bar Standards Board has today begun licensing alternative business structures (ABSs), making it the fifth body granted the power. As with its regime for lawyer-only owned entities, it will specialise in ‘advocacy focused’ ABSs.

A senior partner who was found by an employment tribunal to have discriminated against, harassed and victimised a former equity partner at his firm, has been fined £2,000 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, which found his culpability to be “low” as his behaviour had “just crossed the line into discrimination”.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has dismissed Law Society concerns about disciplinary sanctions imposed on a law firm that paid referral fees to a domestic violence charity. It pointed out that the actions of leading legal aid firm Duncan Lewis were clear breaches of the SRA Handbook.