Compliance & Regulation

A City solicitor who received a second police caution for possessing cocaine – but failed to report it out of fear of losing his job and marriage – has been banned from practice for a year.

Legal regulators will have to explain more clearly how they spend their practising certificate fees under revised rules proposed by the Legal Services Board.

Two-thirds of solicitors do not consider the practising certificate fee value for money, with many expressing concern at the level being charged given the impact of Covid-19.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has today shut down a 16-office law firm consolidator with 180 staff across the country. It is highly unusual for the regulator to intervene in such a large practice.

The Legal Ombudsman has warned that if its poor performance over the last few months continues, it could take more than a year to process even the simplest complaints.

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants has decided to withdraw from legal services regulation and contract it out to CILEx Regulation, in the first move of its kind.

A law firm had to begin legal action to force a partner who had decided to leave to return the files she took home to work on during lockdown, it has emerged.

The president of the Queen’s Bench Division has strongly criticised lawyers at US firm McDermott Will & Emery after they allowed a trial to be live-streamed to observers without the court’s permission.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal has overturned a ruling that a law firm was entitled to fire a partner who was accused of ‘topping up’ legal aid fees with cash from a client’s father.

A highly experienced chartered legal executive who forged her client’s signature after forgetting to ask the client to sign a consent order has been banned from working for law firms.

The Law Society recorded an operating loss of £5.5m on its representative work for solicitors in the last financial year, its annual report has shown. It was part of an overall deficit of £9.3m.

A one-time trainee solicitor who violently raped one woman and attempted to rape another has been banned from the profession. His sentence was increased to 16 years in May.

Multiple charities – including the Church of England – that claim they lost out after a senior partner stole millions from clients’ estates are suing her, her former partner, the firm and its insurer.

The owner of a personal injury firm has been struck off after retaining nearly £500,000 in disbursements to keep his firm afloat after it was badly hit by the LASPO reforms.

Leading law firm Womble Bond Dickinson has been rebuked for providing a banking facility to a client by receiving and paying out more than £2m that did not relate to any legal work it was doing.