Solicitors

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.

The legal profession is one of the sectors of the economy most frequently the subjects of data breaches and increasingly the target of scams and attacks cyber criminals, according to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Legal regulators have called on the government to make a series of changes to the Legal Services Act that will make it easier to approve and regulate alternative business structures. The move is part of the first output from joint work being done by all of the legal regulators to identify opportunities for deregulation.

Barristers’ complaints about the quality of solicitor-advocates in family law cases are really about concerns over falling workloads, solicitors have said. Law Society president Jonathan Smithers accused the family Bar of “denigrating solicitor colleagues under the guise of a concern for quality”.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has reprimanded a solicitor for calling his opponent in litigation, among other things, a “complete plonker” – conduct which it said would diminish the trust of the public in the profession

Barristers have called on the Ministry of Justice to conduct a review of advocacy in publicly funded family cases, arguing that solicitors are letting down their clients and causing injustice by handling cases without counsel.

Two firms applying to the Solicitors Regulation Authority to become alternative business structures asked to keep their client money with the Bar Council’s third-party escrow account, BARCO, it has emerged.

A thousand more law firms will no longer be required to submit accountants’ reports, the Solicitors Regulation Authority decided at yesterday’s board meeting. The change is set to be introduced on 1 November 2015.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has rejected misconduct charges against a solicitor who said he was the victim of technology problems with the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s online system, mySRA, that meant he was not aware of conditions attached to his practising certificate.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to ask solicitors how they judge the seriousness of misconduct offences in a new initiative on professional standards. The move will result in a policy statement and decision-making framework for the regulator’s staff.