Compliance & Regulation

A solicitor who arranged sham marriages as an immigration lawyer while “falsely representing” to the Home Office that his own marriage was genuine, has been struck off.

A local authority solicitor who provided “false and misleading information” to colleagues over a period of 18 months about an application to discharge a child’s care order has been struck off.

The backlog of almost 3,400 cases waiting to be investigated at the Legal Ombudsman “reflects the scale of the challenges” it faces, the chief ombudsman has said.

Complaints about the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s handling of cases rose by 29% last year, with the increase in interventions part of the reason.

A New York lawyer may hold a financial interest in an alternative business structure operating legally elsewhere, the city bar association has said.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is pressing ahead with a huge hike in the compensation fund levy in the wake of the spiralling cost of law firm failures.

Solicitors may face a more restricted professional indemnity insurance market this year amid growing concern over limitations on insurers aggregating claims.

Relations between the Legal Services Board and the Bar Standards Board are close to breaking point over the speed of reform at the barrister regulator.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has reported two law firms to the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, part of the Treasury, for breaching sanctions on Russia.

A managing partner who used staff pension contributions to prop up his firm has been struck off, but his two equity partners were cleared of misconduct.

The new Lord Chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, needs to recognise the need for an overhaul of the legal regulatory regime, the new chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel has argued.

A barrister has been fined £5,000 by a Bar disciplinary tribunal, after he failed to report an SRA investigation into the removal of 242 wills from a law firm he owned.

A solicitor who “repeatedly” transferred money from client to office account to prop up his firm has been struck off by the Solicitor Disciplinary Tribunal.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers is planning to ratchet up the financial pressure on the firms that fail to handle complaints properly under its ‘polluter pays’ approach.

The number of students on Bar vocational courses has continued to grow since the pandemic, new figures have shown. Those with a first-class degree performed far better than others.