Barristers

The Treasury is set to abolish more than two dozen money laundering offences that can penalise lawyers for minor rule breaches, it has confirmed, but they could be replaced with extra powers for regulators. Very small businesses could even be exempted from the rules altogether.

The Law Society has launched what appears to be a last-ditch bid to persuade the Legal Services Board to scrap the proposed scheme to assess the quality of criminal advocacy, saying there is no evidence to support the assertion that standards have fallen.

Legal Services Board chairman David Edmonds is wrong to say there is a “disconnect” between legal education and legal practice, it was claimed last week by the man who has systematically reviewed the Bar’s education and training regime.

The Bar Standards Board has approved the latest version of guidance on “signposting” requirements to notify lay clients of their rights to complain about poor service. It hopes the new formula will satisfy both disgruntled barristers and the Legal Services Board.

The minimum number of continuing professional development (CPD) hours barristers have to spend each year will double to 24, if reforms adopted yesterday by the Bar Standards Board receive a green light from the profession. The move is the latest in a series of CPD reforms across the professions.

A former Court of Appeal judge and the one-time senior partner of City law firm Simmons & Simmons have been appointed joint chairs of a new consultation panel to advise on the fundamental education and training review – now known as “Review 2020″.

The Legal Services Board is considering whether to consolidate the disciplinary regimes run by all the different legal regulators, it has emerged. Recent events “suggest we should explore the feasibility of rationalising existing mechanisms sooner rather than later”.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority, Bar Standards Board and ILEX Professional Standards have been forced to change the name of their advocacy quality scheme after they were threatened with legal action.

The Bar Standards Board should this month finally approve standard contractual terms for barristers instructed by solicitors, after a decade in the making. It has just to decide whether to make it a rule that a barrister need only accept work under the cab rank rule if offered on the new contractual terms.

The Bar Standards Board is to regulate advocacy focused alternative business structures and allow barristers to conduct litigation, its board decided yesterday. However, it has placed significant restrictions on the range of entities it is prepared to regulate.

Advocates seeking accreditation under the quality assurance for advocates (QAA) scheme will be allowed to opt for an assessment centre route rather than judges’ evaluations alone, under new proposals being debated today.

The legal regulatory system is “defective” and in time it might be right for a single regulator to replace the eight frontline regulators, the chairman of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Charles Plant, told yesterday’s Legal Futures Conference.

A memorandum of understanding between legal regulators and regulators and professional bodies in the financial, accountancy and property worlds whose members may be part of multi-disciplinary practices is close to agreement, it has emerged.

The Legal Services Board is to launch an assessment of the regulation of immigration advice and services after taking over responsibility for overseeing frontline regulators in the field. The move will save the profession £110,000 in direct costs.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) has identified its first vexatious complainant, it emerged last night – but it is a lawyer, not a member of the public. It has also appointed former Financial Services Ombudsman Walter Merricks to adjudicate on complaints over LeO’s own service.