Compliance & Regulation

The use of online comparison websites for barristers is “utterly inappropriate”, the Bar Council has said, while describing the Legal Services Board’s work on NDAs “absurd”.

A solicitor struck off for making false and misleading statements on applications for professional indemnity insurance has failed in her appeal to the High Court.

The Bar Standards Board has said it is open to “revisiting” its position that a reaccreditation scheme to ensure the competence of barristers is unnecessary.

Details of many disciplinary and other regulatory actions taken by the Solicitors Regulation Authority will be published for longer than they are now, the regulator has decided.

A solicitor who was convicted of fraud after impersonating a friend to obtain prescriptions for painkillers and sleeping pills has agreed to leave the profession.

The board of the SRA has agreed the final version of the rules for its in-house successor to the Solicitors Indemnity Fund, which is due to begin work on 1 October this year.

There is an increasing trend of firms threatening to report their opponents to the Solicitors Regulation Authority as a litigation tactic, solicitors have told the regulator.

A solicitor who failed to pass on to a client the £132,000 due to her from her divorce settlement – money the profession has now had to stump up – has been struck off.

A law firm co-owner who covered up the existence of a bank account he used for the proceeds of a conveyancing transaction – from both his partner and regulator – has been struck off.

Barristers cannot escape disciplinary proceedings by renouncing their membership of the profession, a Bar disciplinary tribunal has ruled.

A self-employed consultant has been struck off after asking a client to pay a £750 bill to him directly and keep it secret from the law firm he was attached to.

The Legal Services Board should put a priority on access to justice and the needs of people on low incomes rather than professional ethics in its next research programme,.

A veteran solicitor who signed but then kept 743 cheques worth £233,000 in a filing cabinet in his office, rather than using them to pay disbursements and other liabilities, has been struck off.

The arrival of a new chair of the Legal Services Board, taking up the post in April, is the “dominating issue” in its governance, a report by external consultants has found.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has ordered a former client of City firm Simmons & Simmons to pay costs of £291,000 after throwing out his private prosecution of two of its solicitors.