Regulation

It is time to consider lowering the burden of proof used by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal from the criminal to the civil standard, Sir Brian Leveson, the president of the Queen’s Bench Division has said. The case saw the tribunal criticised for using the criminal standard to overturn a decision made by the SRA on the civil standard.

A senior partner whose firm’s involvement in stamp duty land tax avoidance schemes brought in £52,000 in fees – but cost the taxman at least £3m – has accepted a £1,500 fine. He failed to ensure the disclosure of material information to lender clients, and allowed the firm to act where there were conflicts of interest.

Barristers are set to pay 10% extra for their practising certificates for the next decade, first to plug a multi-million pound hole in the Bar Council’s pension fund and then to buy it out and remove all future liabilities.

A solicitor in debt to HM Revenue & Customs who supplied legal services without complying with a condition that he had first to give the taxman security for the VAT, has been rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

A solicitor has been struck off after taking hundreds of thousands of pounds in client money and covering his tracks by forging a host of documents – from bank statements to building regulations certificates – and also falsifying leading counsel’s opinion.

Three solicitors who used legal aid money meant to pay for disbursements to cover their firm’s overheads have been rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Meanwhile, the regulator has made orders against non-solicitors who stole money and stationery from their firms.

The first and only lawyer to be ‘named and shamed’ by the Legal Ombudsman has been suspended from practice at the Bar for 14 months. Tariq Rehman was also prohibited from accepting or carrying out public access instructions for three years.

Many client-care letters get the lawyer/client relationship off on the wrong foot, reinforcing preconceptions of lawyers’ letters as complex and difficult to read, and not providing the information that consumers actually want, new research has found.

The solicitor who caused an uproar in June when he sent out a series of tweets appearing to gloat over defeating cases brought by parents of children with special educational needs and disability, has accepted a rebuke from the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

A partner at a leading law firm who did not inform the client whose will he was revising that he was in a personal relationship with one of the beneficiaries – herself an associate at the firm – and gave himself the power to grant her 11 times as much as she was due from the estate after the client died, has accepted his removal from the profession.