Regulation

The failure to give Scottish notaries public the right to practise in England and Wales is having a “significant impact on clients in terms of cost and inconvenience”, the Law Society of Scotland has claimed. While intra-UK practice rights for solicitors have been in place since 1990, there are no corresponding provisions concerning notaries public.

A solicitor who oversaw “financial chaos” in his practice has been suspended, with a tribunal imposing conditions on his return to the profession in the future to ensure he does not hold a management position. He was also sanctioned for failing to co-operate with the Legal Ombudsman.

A woman who obtained a grant of letters of administration and then used a firm of licensed conveyancers to defend herself against a claim from other potential beneficiaries, has been told by the High Court that she has to pay back to the estate nearly £87,000 given to the firm that has been lost.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has struck off a solicitor who forged correspondence with the Legal Aid Agency, but in an unusual coda to its ruling said he still had “something to offer to the public and providers of legal services generally”.

The Legal Services Board has fired a warning shot across the bows of the Law Society in the wake of the latter’s decision to spend £61m over four years on new IT systems for both its representative and regulatory arms.

A solicitor who acted on both sides of a conveyancing transaction without written consent has agreed to leave the profession. Meanwhile, a solicitor who abused a potential client and sent a “threatening” e-mail to another practitioner has been rebuked and fined £750.

Family law specialists should be required to work under fixed fees, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has suggested as it ramped up its call for regulatory intervention to improve transparency in the market. It said family law was one area where it advised that regulators “should now consider mandating fixed fees”.

A recently suspended solicitor has been allowed to work for a law firm as an unadmitted member of staff under very strict conditions, the Solicitors Regulation Authority announced yesterday. Meanwhile, a solicitor who acted for disgraced former MEP Ashley Mote has been referred to a disciplinary tribunal.

The range of wrongdoing at law firms has been demonstrated by a series of rebukes handed out by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in the past month. The most recent was that of a non-solicitor who was found while working as a conveyancing clerk to have created two e-mails which were purportedly from a client.

The Law Society has called for a ‘sandbox’ approach to regulatory reform that would allow changes to promote innovation to be tested safely. It also came out strongly against the idea of making it compulsory for law firms to publish ‘average’ prices of their services.