Compliance & Regulation

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.

The inns of court are slow to act on behalf of disabled barristers and the Bar Standards Board is to set push them to improve access in listed buildings.

There is a significant attainment gap between providers of the Bar training course, ranging from a pass rate of 94% at the highest to 49% at the lowest.

The SQE could be deconstructed and its modules used to form the “final end-point test” for chartered legal executives and licensed conveyancers as well as solicitors.

The LSB has begun talking about taking formal action against the BSB over shortcomings in its performance, which it has emerged include how it has dealt with the Post Office scandal.

The Bar Standards Board has described how it “struggled” to hit timeliness targets in an “extremely challenging year” for its enforcement work.

Encouraging lawyers to embed client vulnerability into the design of their services is set to be a new Legal Services Board project next year, it said yesterday.

A barrister who overturned a Bar Standards Board sanction for a tweet about Muslims that it said would cause offence is now suing the regulator for discrimination.

The BSB is considering following the SRA in issuing guidance on SLAPPs. It comes as the solicitors acting for Conservative Party chairman Nadeem Zahawi have been reported under the SRA notice.

A solicitor has been jailed for 12 years for fraud by abuse of a position of trust following a private prosecution brought by his former client.

A licensed conveyancer who took a second job working for a client without telling her firm, and then failed to follow its procedures when dealing with him, has been sanctioned for her misconduct.