Solicitors

A bankruptcy judge has set aside statutory demands worth nearly £800,000 issued by the Solicitors Regulation Authority against the founder of collapsed firm Blavo & Co, which were to cover the cost of shutting down what was the UK’s leading mental health practice.

A High Court judge has overturned a decision by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal to strike off a former partner of national law firm Bond Dickinson, because the distinction it drew between acting without integrity and being dishonest meant the whole case against him was flawed.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal struck off 35% more solicitors in the last calendar year than the one before, its annual report has revealed. Meanwhile, the legal costs awarded to the Solicitors Regulation Authority for bringing the prosecutions rocketed from £1.7m to over £3m – an increase of 76%.

A paralegal who secured a job on the back of a false CV and later faked letters to hide the fact that he had missed a court date has effectively been thrown out of the profession. Among other things, he claimed to have attended Yale University, whereas in fact he had just submitted a research paper for the law review, which was not published.

A solicitor who transferred nearly £1.3m to an offshore bank account in Belize has been suspended for a year for breaches of the money laundering regulations and accounts rules. A disciplinary tribunal said she have have unwittingly facilitated the movement of monies during the course of a suspected fraud.

Two solicitors, a trainee and a paralegal are among six men who have today been jailed for a total of 13 and a half years at Liverpool Crown Court for insurance fraud that cost victims £426,000. The first City of London Police Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department prosecution involving solicitors, each was sentenced for conspiracy to defraud by false representation.

A solicitor and the firm where he is a partner have been ordered to pay more than £16,000 in fines and costs for refusing to give documents to The Pensions Regulator which were required as part of a wider investigation. They are the first criminal convictions secured by the regulator, but the firm has hit back strongly at its approach.

The Legal Services Board has dropped plans to probe why it is taking women and those from ethnic minorities so long to reach senior roles in the profession. It also rejected the Law Society’s claim that it is putting too much emphasis on promoting competition at the expense of the other regulatory objectives it is meant to uphold.

The former boss of the first accident management company to buy a law firm and become an alternative business structure has been rebuked and fined £7,500 by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for 11 accounts rule breaches and two breaches of the SRA principles.

The Law Society has scrapped external freedom of information (FoI) adjudications in favour of reviews by an “independent member of staff”, it has emerged. The society is not subject to the FoI Act, but until now it has dealt with requests as if it was covered by the Act, which meant having an independent reviewer.