Compliance & Regulation

A solicitor who failed to report that a fee-earner he employed had been convicted of an immigration offence has been rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Two directors of an alternative business structure have been fined for not supervising a branch office where a fellow director and a bogus solicitor carried out a £3.3m property fraud.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has published details of fines levied against six law firms for failing to confirm in time that they had a compliant anti-money laundering firm-wide risk assessment.

A solicitor who charged a client’s estate fees of over £9,000 during a period of “complete inactivity” has been struck off. He was both its executor and residuary beneficiary.

A solicitor who held nearly 1,500 historical client balances and whose failure to remedy accounts rule breaches was described as a “complete dereliction of duty”, has been suspended for two years.

The Supreme Court has provided a “wholly new legal roadmap” for professional negligence after its ruling last week in two linked cases, the Professional Negligence Lawyers Association has said.

A probe into the lessons of the Post Office scandal for corporate governance, criminal justice and lawyer regulation has been launched and will push regulators to effect change.

The SRA is to follow the approach of the Financial Conduct Authority when capping the fees law firms charge for financial services claims management work – and will leave personal injury work alone for now.

The SRA Compensation Fund paid out more than £10m to the victims of solicitors’ financial dishonesty last year, a 37% increase on the previous 12 months, new figures have shown.

Client data has been stolen from Gateley in a cyber-attack, the listed law firm has revealed. The firm said it was “confident that the incident has been confined to a very small part of its data store”.

A law firm was not under a duty to investigate a client’s agent in a property sale, who turned out to be a struck-off solicitor jailed for theft, the High Court has ruled.

The board of trustees and directors of Solicitors Regulation Authority Ltd met for the first time last week after agreeing the transfer of £9m in assets to the new company from the Law Society.

A law firm revenue controller given a suspended jail sentence after diverting £32,000 in payments meant for suppliers to his own bank account has been banned from working in the profession.

Two solicitors have been fined for allowing their firm to take on work in areas where they had no experience and accepting client money when it did not have a client account.

The spring renewal season saw law firms pay a lot more for their PII, with the surge in conveyancing work a concern and contentious probate an increasing problem.