Solicitors

A solicitor who has become a professional McKenzie Friend after 20 years in practice has hit out at the burden imposed on high street practitioners, which he said cost him almost £2m and pushed him into personal bankruptcy.

Paul Philip, chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), has warned criminal lawyers that they may be the subject of a “thematic review”, as the row between practitioners and their regulator over the legal aid boycott deepened.

Local authority legal departments are being forced to set up alternative business structures by restrictive rules on in-house lawyers, leading to the “privatisation” of public sector legal services, the director of Essex Legal Services has claimed.

The removal of regulatory restrictions on in-house lawyers could provide greater access to justice for consumers, the Legal Services Board has said. It also warned the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board that the reviews of the rules for in-house lawyers they are starting “will need to be far reaching”.

The lack of guidance on the phrase ‘public interest’ in the context of legal regulation potentially makes it meaningless and wastes an opportunity to remind corporate lawyers they are not “mere service providers”, according to an academic.

Barristers’ call for a review of the standards of solicitor-advocates’ work in family cases has been received coolly by regulators, who have told Legal Futures they have seen no evidence of the kinds of problems that would justify an investigation.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has issued a ‘warning notice’ to criminal law firms involved in the legal aid boycott. The notice questions whether two key aspects of the protocol issued last week, effectively limiting the boycott to the Crown Court, are within the rules.

A law firm which demanded the details of people who had contacted the Solicitors Regulation Authority to allege misconduct has been firmly rebuffed by the Law Society’s freedom of information commissioner.

The Legal Services Board has approved radical reforms of the separate business rule for solicitors, while noting that the changes “carry some risks to consumers”. Information on the difference between regulated and unregulated services is to be tested with consumers before the change comes into force.

Richard Barnett, former chair of the Law Society’s land law and conveyancing committee, has told Legal Futures that he is “very surprised” at the decision by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) earlier this week that he should be struck off.