Compliance & Regulation

The behaviour of the barrister who called her more junior opponent a liar before an employment tribunal and mimicked her voice verged on bullying, a disciplinary panel has decided.

The Law Society is planning to increase the cost of practising to boost its income by £8.4m over the next three years as it bids to make itself “indispensable” to members.

Peers have asked the Solicitors Regulation Authority whether it plans to reopen complaints about law firms involved in strategic lawsuits against public participation.

The SRA Compensation Fund paid out £27m to the victims of solicitors’ dishonesty in its last financial year, an increase of 162% on the previous 12 months.

A solicitor who twice tried to settle a client’s complaints on condition that they not report his firm to any regulatory body has been rebuked by the SRA, one of several sanctions it has handed out.

The SRA has set out plans to reverse the increase in the time it takes to investigate complaints, after the number of cases open for more than 12 months topped 1,000 last year.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has started visiting law firms named in Parliament amid concerns about their work for Russian oligarchs, it has emerged.

Class action firm Hausfeld has been rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for allowing its independence to be compromised in the conduct of a massive group claim.

Mid-tier London law firms are “rubbing their hands with glee” at an influx of new oligarch clients turned away by the big City firms, a leading media lawyer has claimed.

Non-solicitors banned from working in law firms by the Solicitors Regulation Authority cannot apply for the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal to revoke the order, the tribunal has decided.

The Bar Standards Board is to ditch the Bar course aptitude test as it is no longer acting as a “filter” of those likely to fail the vocational component of their training.

Legal regulators must not be “overly risk adverse” in supporting the use of technology, given its importance, a senior figure at the Legal Services Board has said.

A Bar Standards Board panel has rejected more than 80 complaints made against a barrister accused of making racist comments on Twitter about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s baby last year.

David Greene, the former president of the Law Society, has failed in his attempt to halt a private prosecution of him at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, although its scope has been narrowed.

The British Medical Association has accused solicitors of bullying GPs by threatening legal action if the doctor does not provide a Covid vaccination exemption for their client.