Compliance & Regulation

The head of a law firm who said she was lied to by a consultant solicitor, who paid £2.25m of property sale proceeds to a third party as part of a pattern of flagrant misconduct, has accepted a rebuke.

A solicitor was kept in the dark by an experienced bookkeeper about improper transfers she was making from client to office account to keep the firm afloat, a tribunal has heard.

A solicitor whose firm received over £530,000 into its client account from an unknown third party, “sat on it” because “we just didn’t know” what to do, a tribunal has heard.

A director of a former London law firm who admitted fabricating grants of probate and using client money to buy jewellery has been struck off.

A junior solicitor diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome who was convicted after sending a woman he briefly dated abusive Facebook messages has now been fined £10,000 by a disciplinary tribunal.

A solicitor who failed to advise on the “obvious risks” of four off-plan property development schemes has been fined £10,000. His advice was “so inadequate as to be incompetent”.

A solicitor has been struck off for falsifying court documents to make a client think his application to extend his leave to remain in the UK had been made before the leave had expired.

The First-tier Tribunal has upheld the decision of the Legal Services Board not to release an email exchange with the Solicitors Regulation Authority over the Leigh Day case.

A revised accounts code that expressly allows firms of licensed conveyancers to use third-party managed accounts has been approved by the Legal Services Board.

The managing director of a Liverpool law firm has been cleared a tribunal of telling holiday sickness clients to delete social media posts which could undermine their claims.

The vast majority of law firms are still failing to comply with the SRA rules on price transparency, a survey has found. The news comes with the regulator planning to step up its checks.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to beef up its monitoring of firms’ anti-money laundering efforts and begin a review of continuing competence, its draft 2020/21 business plan has revealed.

Law firms unable to secure professional indemnity insurance because of Covid-19 can prolong the extended indemnity period by agreement and with regulatory approval.

An experienced solicitor who allowed her firm’s client account to be used as a banking facility in a £8m “cheque-clearing scheme” has been struck off.

A law firm acting for different defendants against the same claimant does not owe that claimant a true fiduciary duty, and so it does not have to prove its Chinese Wall works, the Court of Appeal has ruled.