Regulation

More than one in five law firms have been targeted by scammers in the past year, Law Society research has revealed. Money was successfully stolen from client account in 8% of these cases. However the society’s annual indemnity survey found that average premiums paid by firms with up to 25 partners were down by 8%.

Law firms need to guard against the type of cybercrime called ‘CEO fraud’, according to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The fraud involves spoof e-mails apparently sent in the name of a senior manager to accounts staff authorising urgent cash transfers.

Dr Alan Blacker – the solicitor who has found himself at the centre of constant attention since a judge in 2014 described him as dressing “like something out of Harry Potter” – has failed in his bid to challenge the Law Society’s freedom of information code and stop it releasing information about him.

Two solicitors originally fined £15,000 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for their involvement in operating tax avoidance schemes have been suspended for three years at a new hearing – although the Solicitors Regulation Authority had been pushing for strike-offs.

Only a change in the law would allow the Legal Ombudsman to cover complaints from consumers of unregulated law firms, the chair of the organisation’s governing body has said as he called on paralegals to campaign for access to the redress scheme.

A solicitor has avoided an appearance before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal after accepting a rebuke for failing to report his firm’s “serious financial difficulties”. The firm owed both the taxman and its bank hundreds of thousands of pounds.

A family law barrister who told his chambers that he was acting for a lay client pro bono, and then tried to hide the e-mail trail that proved the client had actually paid him more than £15,000, has been reprimanded and suspended, among several recent Bar disciplinary rulings.

The government has pledged radical reform of the suspicious activity reports regime and its replacement with an intelligence-led, risk-based focus. The proposals include removal of the existing consent regime, and with it the scrapping of the existing statutory money laundering defence.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has fined a solicitor £5,000 for misconduct after he sent inappropriate texts to a vulnerable client who was the victim of domestic abuse. In the course of its judgment, the tribunal laid down best practice for communications between solicitors and clients, including the need to avoid bad language or being patronising.

Almost half of law firms have already moved to the new approach of ‘continuing competence’ that no longer includes collecting CPD points – nearly six months ahead of it becoming compulsory.Meanwhile, the Bar Standards Board has announced that similar CPD regime for barristers will go live in January 2017.