Compliance & Regulation

Solicitors Regulation Authority plans to stop law firms taking money for costs in advance of work being done could harm those working on fixed fees, the Law Society has warned.

The High Court has given the Solicitors Regulation Authority permission to destroy immediately around 765,000 files it is storing after intervening in law firms in recent years.

A non-practising barrister whose dishonest submissions to a court caused it to order the removal of a small child from her father has been disbarred.

The boss of Blavo & Co – the major legal aid firm found by the High Court to have made fraudulent claims on public funds – will finally face the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal this month.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has lifted a condition on a former law firm boss who admitted she had “permitted herself to be manipulated” by a timeshare scheme.

A partner who ignored a warning letter from the SRA telling him not to use his client account as a banking facility, which he then did, has been fined £10,000.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has lifted practising conditions on the former partner of a law firm whom it has twice fined, latterly £20,000 for “very serious misconduct”.

The boss of a Manchester law firm has been fined £12,500 for failing to supervise his trainee properly in conveyancing transactions that “bore the hallmarks of property hijacks”.

An immigration solicitor who misappropriated £31,500 of his law firm’s fees by failing to record clients and then pocketing their fees has been struck off.

A solicitor who facilitated a “secret, snap sale of inheritance property” after which the seller absconded to Morocco with proceeds to which he was not entitled has been fined for missing multiple warning signs.

The Home Office is keeping watch on immigration practitioners to ensure they are regulated and not breaching their obligations, it has emerged.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority should investigate a personal injury firm involved in “layering” a claim with further costs, given evidence that this is a pattern of behaviour..

A solicitor who ran his law firm in a “shambolic fashion”, taking on more than 100 new cases when it should have been in the process of closing down, has been suspended for three months.

A solicitor described by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal as having acted in a seriously inept manner has failed in his appeal against an £8,000 fine to the High Court.

A solicitor whose firm was badly hit by turbulence in the personal injury market – as well as a failed attempt to diversify into cavity wall litigation – used cash meant for disbursements to keep his firm afloat.