Solicitors

Two City solicitors struck off following a rare private prosecution before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal have won a High Court battle that gives them a second chance to fight the allegations against them.

The government has poured cold water on the use of interest on solicitors’ client accounts to fill the social welfare advice and support gap as recommended last week by the Low Commission.

More than 6,000 law firms have yet to submit their workforce diversity data to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the regulator warned yesterday. They now have less than three weeks until the 31 January deadline for reporting the data collected from partners and staff.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority should this week publish a list of those law firms which were to have closed on 29 December because they failed to secure professional indemnity insurance, Legal Futures has learned.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is keeping informants who allege malpractice by solicitors in the dark about the progress of their complaint, two years after the Law Society’s own freedom of information adjudicator urged that the problem should be addressed.

It is unclear how many of the 116 firms that were meant to have shut down last week for failing to secure professional indemnity insurance have actually done so, the Solicitors Regulation Authority admitted yesterday.

The toll of firms failing to renew professional indemnity insurance continues to rise, with another 34 people losing their jobs after home counties firm Hilliers HRW LLP called in administrators.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has hit back over a report questioning why it introduced both entity and outcomes-focused regulation, saying it was acting in the interests of both consumers and lawyers.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has found a further 17 firms that have still not secured professional indemnity insurance, taking the current total facing closure next week to 117.

The move by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to embrace entity-based and outcomes-focused regulation is hard to understand, major new research commissioned by the Legal Services Board and Law Society has claimed.

A “substantial” number of law firms have failed to tell the Solicitors Regulation Authority whether or not they have professional indemnity insurance, the regulator admitted today. The SRA would not reveal how many had not declared their insurance position.

The Law Society and Bar Council’s call for the government to return large swathes of regulation to them is self-serving and aims to restrict competition, the chairman of the Legal Services Board has claimed.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to investigate the likely impact of criminal legal aid fee cuts on the viability of law firms amid warnings that the cost to the profession of collapses could spiral.

The Law Society’s vision for the future of legal regulation would enable it to restrict the licensing of alternative business structures so as to protect solicitors from competition, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned.

Criminality within the solicitors’ profession has reached the level where the Russian mafia have become involved, it emerged yesterday. The SRA has uncovered “very significant levels of misconduct in firms”.