Compliance & Regulation

Two more firms in the Metamorph Law group – including the one to which the caseloads of several others were being transferred – were shut down today.

A pupil barrister who passed off other people’s work as his own and lied about it to the head of his chambers’ pupillage committee has been told he cannot qualify for at least three years.

A solicitor “tested the ethical standards” of the profession by seeking a loan from a client to pay school fees without advising him to seek independent advice, the SDT has found.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is set to make the first changes to its Standards and Regulations since the rules were introduced three years ago.

There is “no prototype” for how to contextualise transparency data about law firms for consumers, and it will not be perfect from the start, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has warned.

The poor performance of the Bar Standards Board is set to hit barristers in the pocket as it seeks to increase salaries to overcome recruitment and retention difficulties.

The Law Society has attacked plans by the Legal Ombudsman to increase pay for its staff by 8%, as part of a 9.6% increase in its budget for the next financial year.

A barrister whose applications for pupillage at one chambers and then tenancy at another were based on a false CV has been disbarred – more than a decade after he first used it.

The SRA today closed down four of the businesses in the Metamorph Group network, comprising 10 law firms, as they were in the process of transferring their practices to another group firm.

A fee-share practice has become what is thought to be the first corporate law firm to become a not-for-profit community interest company, ensuring it donates all profits to charity.

An experienced defence barrister who joked that he would not get paid if his case was discontinued, secretly drafted and uploaded an indictment to stop that happening.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has announced plans to improve the number of senior ethnic minority staff, although its ethnicity pay gap is “heading in the right direction”.

Leading litigator David Greene was yesterday cleared of wrongdoing by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal as the long-running saga that saw him resign as Law Society president neared an end.

A conveyancer who failed to register her clients’ interests at the Land Registry within the time limit, in breach of undertakings, has been fined £10,000 for her misconduct.

A solicitor who dishonestly confirmed that he had witnessed a signature on a lease when he actually had not has been struck off the roll.