Compliance & Regulation

A solicitor and former councillor jailed for housing fraud has accepted that he must now be struck off the roll. The former Duncan Lewis lawyer had been sentenced to 16 months.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has stepped up its probe of solicitors who acted for the Post Office during the sub-postmasters’ scandal, it has emerged.

A solicitor suspended for a year after a tribunal ruled he had acted dishonestly in signing a declaration on behalf of one of his firm’s directors has successfully challenged the decision.

Plans for major shake-up of the rules of the Legal Ombudsman, including reducing the time limit to bring complaints from six years to one, have been unveiled.

A law firm which specialises in the recovery of unpaid parking fines has been fined £15,000 for delays in investigating unallocated payments from debtors totalling nearly £130,000 at one point.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has called for any new internal fining powers for the Solicitors Regulation Authority to be limited to £7,000, rather than the proposed £25,000.

The barrister reprimanded for describing his opponent’s instructing lawyer as a “hysterical woman” says he is being “persecuted for expressing inconvenient truths”.

The Law Society has backed a “moderate” increase in the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s fining powers to between £5,000 to £7,500, rather than its proposed £25,000.

A non-lawyer owner of a law firm that has been hugely successful in running PPI claims has been banned from working for ABSs after he made secret profits from it.

The Legal Ombudsman will publish its decisions in full, but not until “operational stability” has been achieved, it has emerged.

A “high-flying” barrister partner at a City law firm who fabricated a court order was unable to cope with her workload but this did not excuse her misconduct, a Bar tribunal has found.

A male barrister has been reprimanded for describing his opponent’s instructing lawyer as a “hysterical woman” and female lawyers more generally as intemperate.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned law firms that imposing “wholly unreasonable workloads or targets” on staff could result in disciplinary action.

The chair of the Bar Council has warned the Legal Services Board that it risks infringing the Legal Services Act if it demands that regulators impose new competence regimes without sufficient evidence.

The pass rate of 53% achieved by the first group of candidates to sit part one of the Solicitors Qualifying Exam is viewed as “low” by students, an SQE training provider has said.