Solicitors

A furious High Court judge has castigated immigration solicitors for playing the system and referred three law firms to the Solicitors Regulation Authority for conduct displaying “a serious and persistent failure to adhere to proper standards”.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has strongly criticised a solicitor who gave “misleading” evidence on her husband’s £80,000 investment in a personal injury firm, which it said encouraged her to pay banned referral fees.

Criminal law solicitors unable to find a barrister because of their protest over legal aid fees “may need to assist the client to represent themselves as best they can” if the court will not grant an adjournment, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to appeal a tribunal’s decision to suspend a solicitor found guilty of sexual assault as being too lenient, Legal Futures can reveal. Alastair Main was suspended for two years, but this was effectively less than a year as it was backdated to when he lost his job following his conviction.

Small and medium-sized law firms will get free help and advice from some of the biggest firms in the country on how to become more inclusive employers under a pilot scheme launched this month by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority needs to take a tougher approach to non-disclosure agreements, a leading legal ethics expert has told MPs. Professor Richard Moorhead linked the issue to a wider approach to ethics among solicitors that he described as “minimalistic professionalism”, including wrongly seeing the client’s interests as paramount.

A solicitor who “abrogated any responsibility” for her firm’s finances, allowing her fellow partner to take £512,000 from its accounts over five years to feed his gambling habit, has been fined £20,000 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. She argued that he “deliberately concealed” his misconduct from her.

The head of marketing at a firm that took money from the scandal-hit Axiom Legal Financing Fund has been banned from working in the profession after he accepted kick-backs from referral fees paid with Axiom money.

The interim chair of the Legal Services Board has explained to MPs on the justice select committee why the oversight regulator rejected their plea to postpone a decision on the Solicitors Qualifying Examination. The committee called on the board to defer its decision for six months.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to simplify its system for granting waivers to regulations in order to promote innovation. It is also formalising its ‘innovation space’, which it describes as a “safe space” which allows firms with novel ideas that may push the boundaries of the current rules to test them in a controlled way.