Compliance & Regulation
Ban for partner who sought intimate relationship with junior
A partner and registered foreign lawyer at the Brussels office of a major City law firm has been banned after admitting that he wanted a sexual relationship with a young female colleague.
More price transparency and bulk claims rise up SRA agenda
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to restart work on improving transparency for consumers, which could see firms having to publish their prices in more areas of law.
SRA finally getting to grips with aged investigations into solicitors
A major push to improve the quality and speed of the SRA’s investigation and enforcement work has significantly reduced the number of cases older than two years.
Nearly 500 law firms sanctioned for transparency failures
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has sanctioned 475 law firms over failures to comply with its transparency rules since they went live nearly six years ago.
Phil Shiner pleads guilty to legal aid fraud
Disgraced human rights lawyer Phil Shiner has pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud over legal aid applications for claims against British soldiers accused of ill treatment of Iraqi detainees.
Solicitors fined £30k for letting down property clients
Two solicitors have been fined more than £30,000 between them for not considering conflicts of interest and not acting in clients’ best interests.
LSB approves trebling of compensation fund contributions
The Legal Services Board has approved the big hike in contributions solicitors and firms have to make to the Compensation Fund just in time for the SRA to collect them.
Fewer complaints about barristers’ use of social media
The number of reports to the BSB about barristers’ use of social media has unexpectedly fallen but an increasing proportion relate to “controversial social and political issues”.
New equality duty will not impact cab-rank rule, says BSB chief
The Bar Standards Board’s controversial proposal for new equality rules will not affect the cab-rank rule and will not lead to quotas, its director general said yesterday.
“Firms could close” – Law Society joins opposition to SRA fines plan
The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s needs to rethink the “potentially unlawful, confusing and flawed” proposals to update its fining regime, the Law Society said yesterday.
Solicitor rebuked for failures in compliance roles at ABS
A solicitor who held all the compliance roles at an alternative business structure owned by a non-lawyer has been rebuked for multiple failures under his watch.
Former justice minister urges opposition to planned BSB equality duty
Former justice minister Lord Wolfson KC has joined the voices opposing the Bar Standards Board’s plan to impose a new positive duty on barristers to act in a way that “advances” EDI.
Solicitor’s improper Covid letters aimed to push anti-vaccine campaign
A solicitor who sent overly aggressive and legally inaccurate letters before action as part of a campaign against the Covid vaccine has been fined £15,000.
Solicitor fined third of annual income for breach of undertaking
A solicitor who paid out money he was holding, having given an undertaking not to do so, has been fined a third of his annual income by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
Birmingham Law Society attacks SRA’s ‘Robin Hood’ fines plan
More solicitors have attacked the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s plans for new fining guidance, rejecting its “Robin Hood” approach of calculating fines based on income.
Blog
Why law firms are getting AI supervision wrong
The profession’s response to AI supervision failures misunderstands the nature of LLM output – there needs to be for a shift in the culture.
Beyond the PII premium – rethinking risk
Professional indemnity insurance renewal is often treated as an annual pricing exercise. But it is also a chance to show how effectively you identify, manage and mitigate risk.
The AI governance gap in law firms and why it matters now
A third of law firms are already using AI tools with no formal policy in place to govern how AI gets used, what data goes into it, or who’s accountable when something goes wrong.
Reports
Associates
