Compliance & Regulation

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.

Two partners in a former City law firm have each been fined £7,500 for allowing a non-lawyer to have sole and unsupervised conduct of multi-jurisdictional group litigation involving 1,500 clients.

Multiple international bodies are seeking to undermine both legal professional privilege and the independent regulation of the profession, a global lawyers group has warned.

A solicitor who attempted to sell an elderly client’s house to her own civil partner at an undervalue, and was the sole beneficiary of the client’s will that she drafted, has been struck off.

The Information Commissioner has threatened to fine the Ministry of Justice if it fails to deal with thousands of outstanding subject access requests.

A non-practising barrister has been disbarred for dishonesty, after falsely persuading a client he would bring judicial review proceedings.

The solicitor at the centre of a collapsed dishonesty prosecution in 2019 has been struck off for dishonesty after a second prosecution for new offences, including practising without insurance.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers has mooted requiring law firms to purchase standalone cyber-insurance as “evolving forms of cyber-risk” become more complex.