Compliance & Regulation

The Legal Services Board has approved a controversial 4.5% increase in the practising certificate fee for barristers, while warning the Bar Council over how it exercises its regulatory functions.

Efforts to target oligarchs will extend to those who enable them, like law firms, foreign secretary Liz Truss confirmed yesterday.

Pressure to take action against law firms who act for oligarchs and companies connected with the Russian state is increasing from MPs, peers and journalists.

A “disgraceful” solicitor who took half of his £20,000 fee for an immigration matter upfront but then did no work and ghosted his client has been struck off.

The Court of Appeal has upheld a ruling that a barrister who sat as a tribunal chair for the Nursing and Midwifery Council was a ‘worker’ and entitled to sickness and holiday pay.

A solicitor who practised without authorisation for four years and posted messages on Facebook about made-up cases her firm had supposedly won has been suspended from practice.

Two solicitors who were jailed for stealing thousands of pounds from their firm have now been ordered to pay back more than £200,000.

A QC is among the first buyers of a new hemp wig, made without the traditional horse hair and developed by a vegan barrister, as the debate over whether wigs should be compulsory has heated up.

A veteran solicitor who provided banking facilities through his client account for a scheme promising investors a 1,000% return has been fined.

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.