Regulation

City solicitors, regional solicitors, consumers and the Law Society have all pushed back at the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s plans to reduce the two years that students have to spend in workplace training before qualifying.

A senior judge has accused solicitors of “blackmailing” the immigration tribunal in an extraordinary attack that also branded their conduct as “disgraceful” and “shameful” in not pursuing the appeals they had lodged.He also warned that some barristers had wrongly seen their role as protecting their instructing solicitors.

US law firms will have less incentive to employ UK-qualified lawyers as a way to access European market and the UK solicitor title will become less desirable after a hard Brexit, the Law Society has warned. In any event, transitional arrangements to ensure continuity if negotiations are not concluded with two years after article 50 is triggered are essential,

A north London law firm has been rebuked for misleading its client into thinking that it had made a visa application on his behalf. It is one of a series of recent disciplinary cases, including the bankrupt insolvency barrister fined for not paying over fees to his trustee in bankruptcy.

Accountants who want to offer tax litigation and advocacy services under an expanded regulatory regime will have to employ a lawyer after the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) abandoned its attempt to train up its own members.

Figures from the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal have highlighted gaps of a year or more between some decisions by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to refer cases for prosecution and actually sending over the case papers.

The criminal division of the Court of Appeal has taken the unusual step of announcing its intention to refer a City law firm to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The move came after the court ordered businessman Hitendra Patel and criminal law specialists Neumans to repay interim costs of £500,000 to the Lord Chancellor at a hearing last month.

The High Court has overturned a decision by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal that cleared two solicitors accused of misusing £573,000 lent to their law firm by the controversial Axiom Legal Financing Fund.

Two law firm partners have been fined by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for failing to properly supervise a legal cashier who stole over £30,000 from their firm’s office account. She also cashed cheques made out to the firm, but these were repaid by the bank as it was not meant to allow anyone other than a partner to do so.

Outgoing Law Society chief executive Catherine Dixon is to take up the same role at one of the largest agricultural and further education colleges in the UK. Askham Bryan College, which is near York, has nearly 4,000 students at sites across the north of England.