Regulation

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.

A solicitor has been removed from his posts as a deputy district judge and assistant coroner after the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found him guilty of misconduct. Andrew Pascoe was fined £20,000 earlier this year after being found guilty of 20 allegations about his management of a firm in which he was a partner.

Law firms that were insured by the now insolvent Enterprise Insurance have until today to arrange alternative cover. The Solicitors Regulation Authority said on Friday that around two-thirds of the 43 firms that were with the Gibraltar-based insurer have already secured alternative cover.

The Competition and Market Authority was right to conclude that there needs to be more transparency of price and service quality in the legal market, the Legal Services Board said today. But this has to be combined with both short and long-term regulatory reform.

“Many of my solicitor friends are insanely jealous” that the new arrangements for licensed conveyancers’ professional indemnity insurance include free run-off cover, one practitioner said in a survey that showed widespread satisfaction with the regime.

The government’s proposals to clamp down on tax avoidance by targeting advisers with sanctions if HMRC successfully challenges a scheme blur the line between evasion and avoidance, and “threaten the rule of law”, according to a prominent tax lawyer.

Law firms should be at the forefront of the fight against modern slavery, both in terms of their own impact as businesses and advising clients on meeting their human rights obligations, the Law Society has urged.

A partner has been struck off after forging a divorce client’s decree absolute, and misappropriating more than £200,000 from clients to hide his inactivity on other matters. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal said his motivation was “to conceal his professional failings in respect of other clients”.

The body representing chartered legal executives has called on the profession to end discrimination against lawyers who have qualified through non-university routes and open up the senior judiciary to those entered the law by alternative means.

More than four years after it was meant to happen, implementation of the much-delayed Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) is still stuck, while the profession awaits the government’s decision on whether it will set up an overlapping panel of defence advocates, Legal Futures can report.