Solicitors

The highly contentious Leigh Day disciplinary case has come to an end with the Solicitors Regulation Authority paying the firm £1m in costs after the regulator’s unsuccessful appeal.

The High Court has rejected an appeal by a solicitor who “facilitated” immigration claims which were an abuse of process and “effectively ignored” judges’ warnings to change his behaviour.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is “not sufficiently transparent” in explaining its decisions at board level, the Legal Services Board has said, while ticking off other regulators too.

A solicitor who failed to check whether his clients were politically exposed persons, in the first disciplinary matter to involve infamous offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, has been fined £45,000.

A solicitor has been fined for calling a would-be client an “asshole”, “crazy” and “a certifiable nutcase” in correspondence with the man, his partner and the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners.

Efforts to encourage lawyers to make more suspicious activity reports are not succeeding, with the number of reports from the legal sector down 12% last year.

The Law Society has reminded solicitors that their duty to act in their client’s best interests can be trumped by other obligations when drafting non-disclosure agreements.

A solicitor who was the ‘go to’ lawyer for a gang of criminals because he would not ask too many questions about where their money came from has been jailed for seven years.

A solicitor who said his unauthorised firm was acting only for “family and friends” has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, which said this made no difference.

An experienced solicitor escaped with an indefinite suspension after a tribunal accepted her plea that she had falsified a client’s sick note while suffering from mental ill-health.