Regulation

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has issued a strong denial that it has already made up its mind over how it will assess the competence of would-be solicitors, after the Law Society suggested that it had.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has thrown out forgery charges against a non-qualified fee-earner, deciding he had no case to answer and that the Solicitors Regulation Authority should pay costs of £5,000 as a reminder to it to keep cases under review as they progressed.

City solicitors have outlined their deep scepticism about plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to reform professional indemnity insurance rules, warning that “the solicitor brand should not be placed at risk” without very good reason.

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) has been discharged from an undertaking it gave nearly two years ago to deal with concerns over the way it dealt with changes to the cab-rank rule. But in doing so, the Legal Services Board said it had continuing misgivings that have “directed our attention towards the BSB’s approach to regulation more broadly”.

Consumers using ‘unbundled’ legal services generally report a positive experience and it has the potential to widen access to justice, groundbreaking exploratory research has found. However, it made clear that other solutions were also needed to address the legal needs of “more vulnerable consumers” unable to unbundle.

Regulation accounts for between 15% and 23% of the costs of law firms, money they would generally not bother spending if they were not required to, an indicative study by the Legal Services Board has found. However, the opposite was the case for lawyers practising as individuals.

The Visitors of the Inns of Court have thrown out appeals by a barrister against three disciplinary tribunal rulings, including one which disbarred him for seeking an adjournment of his case on grounds of ill-health, although he was found conducting a trial just days later.

The High Court has rejected a Solicitors Regulation Authority bid to increase the sanction for a solicitor who committed perjury to avoid a speeding fine from a suspension to a striking-off. Mr Justice Dove found that it could not be said the two-year suspension was “clearly inappropriate”.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s plans to relax the rules around accountants’ reports have been formally approved by the Legal Services Board, meaning that around 1,000 more law firms will not have to submit one in future

The needs of employed barristers should not be ignored and “second class citizenship” should “by now be a myth”, a former Crown prosecutor has said. Karen Squibb-Williams argued that specialist training should be introduced for employed barristers, including “persuasive advocacy” which could be used in the boardroom as much as the court.