Solicitors

It is time for truly independent regulation of the solicitors’ profession to stop attempts by the Law Society to interfere, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has told the government. It also reiterated a call for all legal activities to be brought within the scope of regulation.

It’s the hottest summer since the end of the Ice Age and the cold dark misery of winter seems a long way off. Try, if you can, to cast you mind forward to January 2014. A depressing month at any time, we can rely on the SRA to make January just that little bit less endurable – last January it was the COLP and COFA regime, next year it’s diversity monitoring.

The incoming Lord Chief Justice has asked the Solicitors Regulation Authority to consider a law firm’s continuing fitness to practise having found its senior partner in contempt of court.

There are signs of the Solicitors Regulation Authority relaxing its strict interpretation of a key rule which may be “dampening” innovation and new entrants to the market, according to the Legal Services Board.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority needs to establish a new expert panel that would be called in to help avoid formal intervention into failing law firms – dubbed ‘intervention lite’ – a specialist solicitor has claimed.

The Legal Services Board is weighing up whether to launch a formal investigation into the way the Solicitors Regulation Authority is handling alternative business structure applications, Legal Futures can reveal.

There has been a 25% fall in the number of law firms closed down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in the past year, new figures have revealed. But despite the number of solicitors before the tribunal also falling, there was a 55% increase in the number of strike-offs.

There is “sufficient consistency of evidence and concern” about the standard of criminal advocacy to warrant the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA), the Legal Services Board concluded today.

Charles Plant, chairman of the board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, has been re-appointed for a further year, it was announced yesterday. His term of office will now expire on 31 December 2014, when he will have led the board for five years.

The requirement on law firms to report non-material breaches to the Solicitors Regulation Authority is set to be ditched in time for this year’s annual information submission. The board of the SRA will tomorrow be asked to approve changes to the SRA Handbook.