Compliance & Regulation

The Legal Services Board is planning an unprecedented independent review of how the Solicitors Regulation Authority has handled the Axiom Ince scandal, MPs were told yesterday.

An inexperienced barrister feared seeking the court’s approval to deduct success fees from damages in infant settlement cases but told his employers he had applied for them.

Dr Charlotte Proudman has welcomed the dismissal of a police inspector who sent her and other women abusive tweets – and contrasted the action with the approach of the Bar Standards Board.

The High Court has refused to order costs in favour of a barrister who successfully reduced the suspension imposed on him for recklessly misleading the Court of Appeal.

MPs were last week asked to support a review of the Legal Services Board after the chair of the Bar Council said the oversight regulator had refused to agree to one.

A struck-off solicitor still advising clients on legal matters has failed to obtain an injunction to compel a bank to unfreeze his account over questionable payments he received from abroad.

A solicitor who acted for a property investment company and an investor has been fined just over £9,000 for breaking conflict of interest rules.

Two law firm directors who used nearly £650,000 in legal aid disbursement payments to prop up their firm, before it went bust owing other creditors a further £1.1m, have been struck off.

The first solicitor ever prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office for ‘tipping off’ a client about a money laundering investigation has been handed a suspended prison sentence.

Nearly half of UK students on the Bar training course are now from ethnic minority backgrounds, compared to a quarter a decade ago, according to new figures.

Lawyers can sometimes be “too inclined” to act unethically or use a “mistaken” adherence to an overly narrow view of the rule of law to justify questionable conduct, major new research has said.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has decided against making an unprecedented mid-year call on the profession to bolster its Compensation Fund in wake of Axiom Ince’s collapse.

Libel law firms continue to mislead journalists and others that their letters cannot be published and the SRA needs to act, high-profile tax lawyer Dan Neidle said yesterday.

A solicitor MP yesterday clashed with the leaders of CILEX over the body’s planned reforms, including using the title ‘chartered lawyer’ and creating chartered paralegals.

A solicitor who threatened another law firm with criminal proceedings if it did not settle a negligence claim, when in reality that would not happen, has been rebuked by the SRA.