Compliance & Regulation

A veteran solicitor serving nearly nine years in prison after being convicted of multiple counts of historic indecent assault against children has been struck off.

An immigration solicitor who brought meritless judicial reviews has been fined £60,000 and banned for an indefinite period from making further applications.

The Law Society has expressed sympathy with professional indemnity insurers over their call for the right to cancel policies when solicitors do not pay the premium or excess.

A law firm linked with 18 cases of Covid-19 was ordered to shut its office with immediate effect last week after being accused of showing “disregard” for the health of its staff.

The Ministry of Justice is considering whether to create a register of unregulated providers of legal services and give their clients access to redress if things go wrong, it emerged yesterday.

A solicitor who used £100,000 from a client’s estate to pay debts to HM Revenue & Customs and an indemnity insurer before closing his firm has been struck off.

A personal injury solicitor has been sanctioned for allowing the claims management company that supplied almost all of his work to dictate the terms of clients’ engagement with his firm.

A conveyancer who recklessly facilitated a mortgage fraud before being convicted of three money laundering offences and then failing to surrender to bail has been struck off.

A law firm which surcharged more than 2,000 clients to help repay the loan it took out for a new case management system has been fined £30,000 by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Legal advice privilege extends to communications with foreign lawyers working in-house even if they are not recognised or regulated as “professional lawyers”, the High Court has ruled.

A criminal law solicitor who used money from a jailed client for an appeal to stabilise his firm’s “precarious financial position” has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

A “passionate, caring and in many respects competent” solicitor, whose firm got into a financial mess in part because of the accounting software she used, has escaped removal from practice.

The Competition and Markets Authority today announced a three-month review of the progress made in improving competition in the legal services sector for consumers and small businesses.

Well-known law firm Taylor Vinters has been fined by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for failing to undertake proper money laundering checks on millions of pounds paid into its client account.

A solicitor has launched what he believes is the first legal consultancy in the UK devoted entirely to nanotech firms, the latest to use the rules that allow solicitors to practise from unregulated firms.