Regulation

The Bar Standards Board has promised to provide “lighter weight and less costly” regulation than its rivals as it applied to become a regulator of alternative business structures last week. “Many potential entities” wanted to “exploit the greater flexibility” that operating as an ABS could provide.

Scotland’s most senior judges have rejected a bid to allow an English barrister to appear before the country’s highest civil court for the first time in nearly 500 years. They said that the College of Justice Act 1532 remains good law.

Michael Stannard, a former barrister convicted of cheating the public revenue of over £3m, has failed in his latest attempt to challenge a confiscation order made against him. The judge said she had “formed the clear impression” that he was “wholly unrepentant”.

A decision by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) to suspend a solicitor for two years has been reduced to one by the High Court, which described the penalty as “clearly excessive and inappropriate”.

A district judge has described how an immigration solicitor who continued to practice despite being suspended left behind her a “trail of destruction”.

The number of QCs is continuing to fall, statistics from the Bar Standard Board have shown, dropping by more than 200 in four years. This contrasts with the steady rise in the total number of practicing barristers.

Major law firms will soon “eschew the solicitor brand” in favour of conducting non-reserved legal business in the unregulated sector, the compliance officer at a top City firm has predicted.

William John Owen, a former coroner for Carmarthenshire, has been referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. Mr Owen, 79, was jailed for theft in November last year for five years.

Alan Kershaw, chair of CILEx Regulation, has said lawyers should be regulated “by competence, not by title” and urged the different branches of the profession not to give up on common training.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) will focus more on individual regulation and less on firms in the year ahead, chief executive Paul Philip has said.