Compliance & Regulation

A former general counsel has been fined for failing to disclose his interest in instructing an external firm and his links with a solicitor he then recommended to that firm.

A national legal support and information service for small businesses, akin to Citizens Advice, would help bridge a “significant access to justice gap”, the Legal Services Board says today.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal rejected a lower fine for high-profile solicitor Karen Todner, in part because she was the tribunal’s vice-president at the time of her misconduct.

A male barrister who sexually assaulted a female colleague and then asked her to lie to help him cover his tracks with his partner has won his appeal against disbarment.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority needs to investigate a “clear breach” of its recent guidance over SLAPPs, lawyers for the founder of investigative website Bellingcat have said.

A solicitor has been rebuked for taking referrals from a genealogy business that acquired clients in a way that a law firm would be prohibited from doing.

A solicitor who has failed to pay thousands of pounds in outstanding fees to counsel has been fined by the SRA, with others fined for accounts and transparency rules breaches.

A former paralegal at national law firm BLM has been jailed for three years and three months after pleading guilty to stealing £438,000 from the firm to feed his gambling habit.

MPs and peers have called for “a radical overhaul” of anti-money laundering supervision, with regulators of lawyers urged to issue wrongdoers with “bigger, more public” fines.

A proposal by the Legal Ombudsman to cut the time limit for consumers to bring a complaint from six years to one “goes too far”, the Bar Standards Board has argued.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has struck off a solicitor whose conduct has led to 25 claims on the SRA Compensation Fund totalling £750,000 from conveyancing clients.

Law firms selling pre-paid funeral plans as intermediaries may need to be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned.

Details of disciplinary and other regulatory action taken by the Solicitors Regulation Authority could be published for longer than the current three years to combat misinformation online.

Listed company Marlowe has made Compliance Office – a business that advises law firms on compliance with Solicitors Regulation Authority rules – the latest addition to its fast-growing legal arm.

Legal regulators need to have summary processes in place to deal with vexatious litigants who use their procedures to continue a “proxy war” against lawyers, a High Court judge has said.