Compliance & Regulation

Decisions taken by law firms to act for clients, including “environment-harming” fossil fuel companies and others, are not about access to justice or legal ethics, a leading academic has argued.

The government is to define in law what a SLAPP is in relation to economic crime and require claimants to prove it has a reasonable chance of success to advance it in court.

The dispute between CILEX and its regulator opens the door to a single regulator for the legal profession, another of the regulators has cautioned.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has fined a senior partner £18,750 for accounts rules breaches – the biggest fine for an individual since the regulator was given increased powers last year.

The experience of the pandemic has given lawyers greater confidence in innovation and technology, leading to a “step change” in their use over the past three years, major research has found.

A senior solicitor who misled two clients for three years over the progress of their personal injury claims – when they had actually been struck out – has been struck off.

The Post Office has replaced City giant Herbert Smith Freehills as its solicitors for the ongoing Horizon IT Inquiry, it announced yesterday, a move observers suggested was overdue.

Career barriers facing law students from ethnic minority backgrounds could affect their performance in the SQE if they feel there is little point in doing well.

Women who claim to have been harmed by vaginal mesh implant surgery have been left “angry and distraught” after the SRA closed down a law firm acting for them.

A barrister who recklessly misled the Court of Appeal – and made “serious and misconceived allegations” against other lawyers in doing so – has been suspended for a year.

Changes to statutory requirements on how lawyers handle complaints will move closer this week amid concern that consumers are being let down at the moment.

A law firm that failed to recognise a conflict of interest when it acted for one party in a dispute over a boundary issue on a property it had divided has been fined £4,250.

A solicitor who “continuously and repeatedly” lied to a client about the progress of his professional negligence claim has been struck off.

Climate change campaign group Lawyers Are Responsible has urged law firm giant Allen & Overy to cease acting on fossil fuel infrastructure projects and refuse any future instructions.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to publish the salaries of the solicitors it fines and impose ‘default salaries’ on those who refuse to reveal them.