Compliance & Regulation

Not all mistakes made by solicitors are professional misconduct, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has ruled in dismissing allegations that an assistant misled the court.

Co-operative Legal Services has been fined nearly £144,000 for recovering more costs in personal injury claims than it was entitled to – the largest fine the SRA has ever handed out to an ABS.

A senior solicitor who did a Ku Klux Klan impersonation at his Black secretary and repeatedly groped her bottom has been fined and urged to undertake diversity training.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has taken the unusual step of making a costs order against the Solicitors Regulation Authority for the “grave errors” it made in a case it eventually had to withdraw.

A personal injury lawyer who inflated costs, put false information before a court, misled her insurer and “wrecked lives” has been struck off.

A law firm has lost an appeal against a penalty imposed by HM Revenue & Customs for the late payment of tax under PAYE, with the tribunal saying it should have posted the cheque in good time.

Solicitors and accountants are at odds over whether the new economic crime levy should be calculated by reference to their income or the number of suspicious activity reports they made.

The rules on price transparency are dispelling consumers’ pre-conceptions that legal services are unaffordable and many are now shopping around online, new research has claimed.

It was “fundamentally wrong” for Legal Services Board rules to force the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants to withdraw from legal services, another accountancy body has argued.

Solicitors are concerned that some new legal technology they buy does not take into account their professional rules and ethical duties because lawtech firms are “not speaking the same language”.

The Office for Legal Complaints, the governing body of the Legal Ombudsman, has renewed its call for it to be allowed to extend its reach to unregulated legal services providers.

The Law Society and SRA need to do more to show that they take on board what solicitors have to say about the cost of practising, the Legal Services Board has warned.

The Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme is a “market barrier”, blocking entry to non-solicitor law firms, the Competition and Markets Authority has been told.

A “manifestly incompetent” partner, whose “neglect and carelessness” led to a shortage in her law firm’s client account of £214,000, has been suspended for 18 months.

Compliance with the rules on price and service transparency is improving but a stubborn minority are facing disciplinary action, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has said.