Compliance & Regulation

A solicitor who used a client’s £132,000 divorce settlement to pay off her tax bill and give money to her daughter has been handed a suspended prison sentence.

Law firms’ conduct of cases involving privacy and reputation appears to have improved over the past 18 months, according to new research by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The collapse of SSB Law and impact on its former clients came to the attention of Rishi Sunak this week after it was raised at Prime Minister’s Questions.

People facing legal problems are becoming less likely to seek professional help and, even when they do, are slowly turning away from solicitors, major new research has found.

A solicitor who lied to litigation clients about sending pre-action protocol letters and failed to tell one of them about a costs offer until it expired has been struck off.

A “myopic interpretation of acting in the client’s best interests” is one of the reasons why lawyers who acted for the Post Office crossed lines, a barrister acting for sub-postmasters has suggested.

All 6,626 candidates who took the SQE1 in January have had their results reissued after marking errors meant 175 who thought they had failed actually passed.

The Court of Appeal has rejected an appeal against the 14-month jail sentence imposed on a barrister who obtained drugs from two men he was representing.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has begun the search for a new chair for its board, who will be paid £105,000 a year for around two days a week.

The Legal Services Board is to probe the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s actions in the lead-up to the collapse of SSB Group, it has announced.

A man whose parents granted a charge over their house to repay the £90,000 misappropriated from his law firm employer has failed to overturn a ban on working in the profession.

The Bar Standards Board has the right approach to dealing with complaints about barristers’ conduct but there are “a large number of areas” for improvement, a major review has concluded.

A group of campaigners have called on the BSB to drop its prosecution of high-profile and self-declared feminist barrister Dr Charlotte Proudman over criticisms she made of a judge.

The SRA is going ahead with plans to move its English or Welsh language proficiency checks from the point where solicitors apply for their first practising certificates to the point of admission.

The Bar Council has strongly attacked plans by the Bar Standards Board to scrap the requirement that Bar students must have at least a lower second-class degree.