Solicitors

The Law Society has condemned the Solicitors Regulation Authority over plans to allow workplace training for solicitors to take place in organisations without any solicitors. The society warned that the proposals could “seriously undermine” high standards.

A partner has been struck off for dishonestly settling a personal injury claim for £5,000 without instructions, telling the client it had settled for £60,000, and then paying out the fictitious damages from unrelated client accounts.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has said it cannot explain why the number of interventions into law firms in the first five months of 2017 was twice the figure for the same period last year. The regulator said there was also a “noticeable increase” in the size of firm.

A solicitor who confessed to his law firm that he had faked a letter “within hours” of sending it to a client, has been fined £2,000 by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Ian Giddings, based at the Warwick office of national family firm Woolley & Co, admitted creating and backdating the letter.

Reports of cybercrime from law firms reached record levels in the first quarter of this year, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has said. The figures are contained in the regulator’s latest Risk Outlook, which for the first time includes questionable investment schemes involving solicitors.

Judges are “left uneasy” by professionals presenting their own challenges to regulators as litigants in person and ignoring the “best points” available to them, the High Court has heard. Mr Justice Green said that it was an “unfortunate feature” of regulatory proceedings that while the regulator was represented, the appellant, who did not qualify for legal aid, “frequently was not”.

A sole practitioner who did not have a client account and admitted using his office account “at times as a personal account” has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. The tribunal heard that Michael Healey, based in Liverpool, misappropriated over £31,000 of client money before going bankrupt.

Claims management companies have earned over £6bn in the past decade, new figures from the Claims Management Regulator have shown. In a special anniversary report to mark 10 years of regulation, the CMR said that the number of CMCs had shrunk from a peak in 2011 of 3,213 to 1,388 in 2017.

US law firm White & Case has been fined £250,000 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal – five times the previous highest for a firm – over client conflict and confidentiality rule breaches. The tribunal yesterday approved an outcome agreed by the firm and the Solicitors Regulation Authority that in addition a partner should be fined £50,000.

A barrister who made failed to disclose that he had previously run a law firm shut down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority before he applied to be called to the Bar, has been disbarred. Meanwhile, the SDT has struck off a former partner at London firm Hamlins for forging and backdating six letters.