Compliance & Regulation

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has fined a law firm that did not comply with its transparency rules £3,500, the highest penalty it has issued for the offence.

Legal Choices, the consumer-facing website which since 2019 has been paid for by all the legal regulators apart from the Bar Standards Board, is now receiving “part funding” from the BSB.

MPs have criticised the Rugby Football Union for not taking action against an owner of a leading club who was banned from working for law firms.

The government is to extend the SRA’s powers to demand information from solicitors and firms beyond money laundering matters to economic crime more generally.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has fined an Oxfordshire law firm a record £20,000 after finding it “reckless” in failing to comply with the anti-money laundering requirements.

Hesitation about adopting artificial intelligence by law firms nervous of the risks presented by a regulatory grey area is causing a bottleneck that needs to be cleared.

A council’s failure to ensure either a lawyer or ‘exempt’ individual served a Crown Court indictment did not “automatically invalidate” it, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

CILEX has acquired the Institute of Paralegals and its Professional Paralegal Register as it looks to strengthen its position as the body for specialist legal professionals.

A barrister who held himself out as practising while he in fact he was serving a suspension has been disbarred after his fourth appearance before a disciplinary tribunal.

An experienced police station representative who communicated with a jailed client via a mobile phone he should not have had has been banned from the profession.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has been sanctioned in costs after prematurely stating that it had banned a former trainee solicitor from working for law firms.

Pressure on the Bar Standards Board to improve its performance ratcheted up today after it scored by far the worst of all the legal regulators in the Legal Services Board’s annual assessment.

A retired solicitor has been fined £7,500 for using client accounts as banking facilities over decades to handle property management work for Arab clients.

A US lawyer advised his clients to have someone with Covid or another “highly infectious, nasty disease” lick and handle an envelope being sent to opposing counsel, it has emerged.

The new chair of the Bar Council has called on the Ministry of Justice to review the Legal Services Board, prompting a tart response from the oversight regulator.