Regulation

A volume conveyancing firm has apologised after sending out letters to clients asking for an additional £200 fee to “prioritise” their files in the run-up to Christmas. Meanwhile, the Council for Licensed Conveyancers is to launch a ‘secure badge’ to help the firms it regulates combat their websites being cloned.

A “vast amount” of complex and lucrative international commercial work could be lost by UK lawyers if they are denied access to the EU legal services market as a result of Brexit, the Bar Council has warned – although some lawyers would “doubtless be in high demand in the short term for new, Brexit-related work”.

A solicitor who retained nearly £50,000 of client money for up to five years instead of paying professional disbursements has accepted a rebuke and fine to halt her referral to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

We round up news stories from the week we haven’t had room to cover, including more sanctions for solicitors caught up in dodgy investment schemes, a new chair for the Legal Services Consumer Panel, a barrister being disbarred over payments to himself, advice on price transparency, and much more.

E-mail hacks of conveyancing transactions are the most common cybercrime in the legal sector, with £7m of client losses reported in the last year, according to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. It said that three-quarters of cybercrimes reported to the SRA in the 12 months are some form of ‘Friday afternoon’ fraud.

A solicitor who did not report his conviction for assault to the Solicitors Regulation Authority has agreed to remove himself from the profession for three years. According to a regulatory settlement agreement published by the SRA, he also pleaded guilty to driving a vehicle while unfit.

A Hull solicitor has become the latest to be struck off after borrowing millions from the controversial Axiom Legal Financing Fund which have not been paid back. He drew down £3.15m of a £20m facility to prop up the firm, which accountants Baker Tilly had declared to be insolvent.

Some 810 solicitors from England and Wales will have been admitted in Ireland by the end of 2016 to protect their status in a post-Brexit Europe, figures from Dublin have revealed. The Law Society of Ireland said there were few signs at the moment of any of them taking out practising certificates or their firms opening offices in the country.

A male solicitor has been found guilty of discussing with a vulnerable female client a third his age that she might make good an unpaid bill with a topless photo shoot and possibly sexual activity. He was also found to have watched pornography in his office with her.

A model of training barristers that would split the Bar professional training course into two – allowing students to learn procedure and evidence however they want before undergoing compulsory skills training – has been put forward by the Bar Council and Council of the Inns of Court as an alternative to the regulator’s plans for training reform.