Solicitors

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is planning a major consultation on ethical values with the profession and the public next summer, chief executive Paul Philip announced yesterday.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has today set out a series of measures aimed at improving its relationship with small firms. It said it wanted to counter perceptions that the regulator is indifferent to small firms, and that it does not understand the practicalities of running them.

Online training company Datalaw has secured a six figure investment from a northern venture capital fund and promised to quadruple the number of its continuous professional development (CPD) courses.

Law firms should be able to provide accountancy and other services without setting up separate businesses to help them compete with alternative business structures, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has proposed.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to end the monopoly currently enjoyed by the Law Society’s ‘Find a Solicitor’ website, by making the data behind it available to commercial comparison sites. It is also to set up own “online regulatory register” for the public.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is already in touch with AIM-listed alternative business structure Quindell, it has emerged. There has been widespread speculation about what action the SRA is taking over Quindell, whose share price has nose-dived in recent weeks.

The outgoing chairman of the Solicitors Regulation Authority has urged the “flat-earthers” at the Law Society to accept that full structural independence for the regulator from Chancery Lane is inevitable.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is proposing to cut further the number of law firms required to submit annual accountants’ reports, setting out a revised set of criteria for accountants to decide whether reports should be qualified.

The time taken between serious misconduct being reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority and a referral to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal is 550 days, the regulator has revealed in a new transparency push.

“Overwhelming disagreement” made the Solicitors Regulation Authority abandon a plan to make compliance officers sign declarations that their firms followed the accounts rules, it has emerged. But further changes to accountant’s reports are coming.

Mr Justice Green, chairman of the Advocacy Training Council, has condemned the lack of a “level playing field” for publicly funded advocates, which is leading to the practice of “selling litigation rights”.

A new Criminal Bar Association campaign to ensure that barristers and higher court advocates compete on a “level playing-field” does not amount to a “cry for war”, its chairman has said.

The Solicitors Compensation Fund could be hit by a new wave of property claims after a High Court ruling on two test cases relating to a buy-to-let scheme.

MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have for years advised staff that they may “target the communications of lawyers” and use legally privileged material “just like any other item of intelligence”, it was claimed yesterday after campaigners won the release of secret government policies.

The number of reports of bogus law firms received by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in the first eight months of this year is up by over 20% on the same period last year, the regulator has said.