Compliance & Regulation

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has rejected an application for restoration to the roll from an ex-solicitor who it had sanctioned three times and had been convicted of fraud.

A top-10 law firm will float on the stock market in the next couple of years, a senior former legal regulator has predicted. He also argued for rapid regulatory authorisation for lawtech start-ups.

Mishcon de Reya was in the news last week as its planned stock market listing was delayed and the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal published the reasons for fining the London firm £25,000.

The number of pupil barristers has rebounded after the pandemic sent it crashing, while women increasingly dominate the junior end of the Bar, new figures have shown.

The US and its allies should take “significant steps to crack down on the Western enablers of Russian kleptocracy” such as law firms, an influential American think tank has argued.

The Bar Standards Board is considering whether intermediaries to direct access barristers should come within its regulatory control following the demise of Absolute Barrister.

An immigration solicitor certified a lasting power of attorney for a walk-in client without checking his capacity, allowing the man’s son and attorney to misuse some of his money.

The Legal Services Board is aiming to reduce inconsistencies in the sanctions imposed across the legal profession in cases such as sexual misconduct, racial harassment and bullying.

The High Court has rejected an appeal from a criminal law barrister suspended for six months by a Bar disciplinary tribunal for lewd comments to a female mini-pupil.

The Legal Services Board has refused to ‘de-designate’ an accountancy body as a probate regulator over concerns that its members are now practising unregulated.

A solicitor who admitted “not having noticed” that his client’s judicial review had been struck out and not working on the case for almost two years has been fined £12,500.

The results for the first ever Solicitors Qualifying Examination assessment showed that, as with the legal practice course, race is a major factor in success. Some 53% passed in all.

A former high-profile City litigator has failed in his appeal against being struck off for using a client’s divorce settlement to fund his ventures to pursue digital dispute resolution.

The government needs to “end the cancer” of high-end law firms selling “intimidation services” to oligarchs and others trying to use the legal system to silence journalists and critics, MPs heard yesterday.

A lawyer has been jailed for 13 months after showing a “brazen disregard” for his regulator by failing to hand over his firm’s files to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.