Compliance & Regulation

The Legal Services Board has warned the frontline regulators that it will take action if they do not deliver new measures to improve transparency around lawyers’ services by September.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has this week issued fines totalling nearly £50,000 to two law firms and a solicitor over various breaches of anti-money laundering rules.

One of the immigration solicitors caught up in a Daily Mail sting last summer has failed in his complaint about it to the Independent Press Standards Organisation.

A chartered legal executive who failed to check the identity of a walk-in client who said the firm had acted for him in the past has been rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The Competition & Markets Authority has been urged to step in and accelerate the “painfully slow” progress legal regulators are making in developing quality indicators.

The Court of Appeal has dismissed the latest bid by the insurer of London law firm Jirehouse – whose founder is in jail for fraud – to exclude liability for the multi-million-pound loss suffered by a client.

A partner who failed to conduct proper client due diligence in property transactions that had signs of money laundering has been fined £15,000.

A salaried partner who told clients to pay him in cash or with cheques made out to him, which he kept, has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

The BSB is planning to scrap the requirement that Bar students have at least a lower second-class degree, opening the way for those with third-class degrees or no degree at all to become a barrister.

The public sector is home to a more diverse group of in-house solicitors than the private sector, Solicitors Regulation Authority data has shown.

A Scottish solicitor who groped a colleague while working in the City at Dentons has had controls placed on his future employment in the sector.

The Legal Services Board is on the hunt for a new chief executive after Matthew Hill announced that he would be stepping down at the end of March 2024.

The barrister who gave a Nazi salute to magistrates during proceedings did not also goose-step or say “Sieg Heil”, despite evidence suggesting he did, a tribunal has found.

The pass rate for legal practice course students fell to below 50% in the first year of the Solicitors Qualifying Exam, new figures have shown.

The SRA has handed out a £10,000 fine – reduced from £16,000 due to co-operation – to a solicitor convicted of drink driving, an unusually high figure for the offence.