Solicitors

City firms with ‘onshore’ offices in cities such as Belfast and Manchester are breaking professional rules by not making it clear to clients where the work is being done, groundbreaking research has suggested.

An employment tribunal has ruled that it was wrong to uphold an unfair dismissal claim against a partner in a law firm closed down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

A solicitor who kept the £1,000 his client paid for a court fee has been struck off. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard that he treated the money, paid into his personal account, as a “loan”.

A solicitor who “consciously closed his eyes” to the activities of people he knew were fraudsters, agreeing to buy a law firm which was “purchased from the outset as a vehicle for fraud”, has been struck off.

A veteran solicitor who failed to ensure that his client took independent legal advice before leaving him money in her will has agreed to leave the profession.

Lawyers and their clients have been guilty of “a kind of mutually assured amorality or immorality” in their approach to non-disclosure agreements, a leading critic of the profession’s approach has said.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has promised to make “open justice” central to its response to requests from non-parties for access to papers used at disciplinary hearings.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has ended a controversial five-year project to reform the professional indemnity insurance regime, meaning the minimum level of cover will not be cut to £500,000.

The Bar Standards Board has been told that it needs to act more quickly on how it plans to educate the public about barristers after its widely criticised decision to stop funding Legal Choices.

The new rule that prohibits solicitors from making unsolicited approaches to members of the public is not a blanket ban on all advertising, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has clarified.