Compliance & Regulation

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has launched its latest effort to expand its fining powers, this time looking to increase the current £2,000 maximum to £25,000.

Law firm closures and interventions have fallen during the pandemic, but it has had negative effects too, such as abuse of government funding schemes, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has revealed.

A solicitor who hit a person around the head with a frying pan, and another who tried to use a settlement agreement to prevent disclosures to HMRC, have been rebuked.

A lawyer who failed to comply with court orders to hand over his firm’s files to the Solicitors Regulation Authority is facing possible jail time after being found in contempt.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers is pressing the Simplify group to reach a position where it can provide its files to clients who wish to change lawyer following the recent cyber-attack.

The evidence for abolishing the Bar course aptitude test is “compelling” as it has failed to achieve its purpose, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said.

A barrister found to have brought a fundamentally dishonest personal injury claim was not disbarred after a tribunal did not accept that his case was actually fraudulent.

A solicitor who plundered her client account to meet her personal financial obligations and her ex-partner’s car debts has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

The country’s largest conveyancing group has been told by its regulator to improve communication with clients in the wake of a paralysing cyber-attack this week.

There are “differing levels of achievement and some significant weaknesses” among the UK’s legal regulators in their approach to anti-money laundering, their oversight body has reported.

The Legal Services Board has said other legal regulators could learn lessons from a highly critical review it has published on the Faculty Office, the regulator of notaries.

It is not the job of the Solicitors Regulation Authority to help retired solicitors “sleep easy” by protecting them from historic negligence claims, its director of regulatory policy has warned.

A solicitor at a commercial law firm in Cardiff has been fined £24,000 for recklessly providing a banking facility for a client over a period of almost two years.

A tribunal has condemned a partner’s “outrageous” lies to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, made in a bid to frustrate its investigation into her firm.

Only 47% of barristers feel generally content with their working lives, a report for the Bar Council has found, while just 45% felt they could “cope with the competing demands” of their job.