Compliance & Regulation

A law firm that held nearly £600,000 in hundreds of residual client balances dating back 28 years has been fined by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The SRA today starts a conversation about the future of client protection arrangements, the extreme end of which could see the end of firms holding client money and of the Compensation Fund.

A solicitor has been jailed for two years after admitting abusing her position to steal tens of thousands of pounds from two vulnerable people, one of whom was her father.

A legal helpline adviser at Irwin Mitchell was not under a duty to advise a prospective client of steps she needed to take to protect her position, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to consult on how it would regulate CILEX paralegals and students in the next stage of its work on assuming oversight of the legal executive profession.

Consumer claims firm SSB Law, which went into administration earlier this month owing six litigation funders £200m, faces up to 1,400 professional negligence claims, it has emerged.

There is nothing “inherently improper” about barristers using tools based on generative AI, so long as they are “properly understood” and “used responsibly”, the Bar Council has said.

A solicitor who dishonestly misled his client, his client’s son and the other side about the progress of litigation he was conducting has been struck off.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has written to give guidance to more than 1,000 law firms that admit they do not have basic controls in place to mitigate sanctions risk.

A solicitor who actively concealed from his employer the fact that he had taken loans from clients and received referral fees from a short-term lender has been struck off.

Long-term trends of improving diversity at the Bar continued last year, with women now making up just over 40% of barristers, Bar Standards Board figures have shown.

A solicitor has been fined for acting for clients in a property dispute knowing they had a possible negligence claim against the firm for causing the litigation in the first place.

Three suspected fraudulent immigration lawyers have been arrested in Greater Manchester following a Home Office raid on Wednesday.

The queue of cases awaiting investigation at the Legal Ombudsman is not falling as fast as had been expected, with the March 2024 target having been revised upwards for a third time.

The Bar Standards Board has yet to see evidence from the Post Office inquiry that requires it to take urgent action against any barrister, it has told Legal Futures.