Compliance & Regulation

The Legal Services Board has retained a Northern Irish law firm to assist with its review of regulatory events leading up to the SRA’s intervention into Axiom Ince.

Barristers are facing a 9.5% increase in the cost of their practising certificates next year, reduced from 13.5% with the Bar Council again planning to use its reserves to mitigate the increase.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has removed a condition on the practising certificate of the owner of a legal aid law firm after he warned that it could force the firm to close.

Training to prevent bullying and harassment should be compulsory for barristers, the leader of gender equality group Behind the Gown has said.

A law firm employed a head of finance who concealed the fact that he had been jailed in Ireland for defrauding his previous employer.

The Bar Standards Board to press ahead with new powers for interim suspensions where necessary to protect the public or the public interest.

The legal department at Mirror Group Newspapers was aware of phone hacking far earlier than it admitted, the High Court found last week in the claim brought by Prince Harry.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has urged solicitors under work pressures to “be open with their clients when problems arise” after suspending a “cavalier” partner.

Delaying the point at which barristers are called to the Bar until after obtaining pupillage could improve social mobility if it reduces the number of overseas students and “less able domestic students”.

A solicitor who submitted a claim form for far less than the case was worth, in order to avoid paying a large court fee, and later fabricated it to show a higher value, has been struck off.

An experienced male solicitor found to have inappropriately touched a 21-year-old female paralegal, including slapping her backside, has been suspended for a year.

The Legal Services Board plans to increase its “capacity and capability” to launch investigations into, and reviews of, the frontline regulators “on a regular basis”.

There is a “slow but steady increase in diversity among all lawyers”, the Solicitors Regulation Authority reported yesterday in its biennial collection of the profession’s diversity data.

The SRA has postponed changes it was set to make to the accounts rules – including how money taken for costs in advance of work being done is dealt with – in light of the Axiom Ince scandal.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority still has “a long way to go” on diversity, its chief executive has said – although its gender and ethnicity pay gaps are shrinking.