Solicitors

Law firms may have just weeks to reorganise their business plans once a decision is made on enforcing the ban on referral fees in personal injury work, a leading practitioner has warned while branding the situation “unbelievable”.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is set to “streamline” the alternative business structure (ABS) application process, its chief executive has revealed after its approach and the time it takes were criticised at a high-profile event yesterday.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority sent out a strong message yesterday that firms which fail to co-operate with it will face tough action. It also emerged that the SRA is set to share details of the risks it considers law firms face with their COLPs and COFAs.

The Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) should recruit a high-powered team of young lawyers to vet its proposals and provide fresh insights into the future of the legal marketplace, Professor Richard Susskind has urged.

Vulnerable asylum seekers are at risk of “serious detriment” from a complex asylum process and potentially “sloppy” work by immigration advisers, according to the Legal Services Consumer Panel.

The High Court has thrown out a solicitor’s challenge to the decision to suspend him, which he argued was tainted by racial discrimination. Mr Justice Haddon-Cave said that “no scintilla of discrimination of any kind is detectible”.

The High Court has struck off a solicitor who was only suspended by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. The Solicitors Regulation Authority appealed the February 2011 decision to suspend him for three years, even though he was found him to have acted dishonestly.

It is solicitors, and not barristers, who are to blame for the decline in advocacy standards that has led to the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA), the Bar Council has claimed, while also strongly opposing the creation of ‘plea-only advocates’.

The Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) will drive many solicitors out of criminal law, the Law Society has warned. It is the latest hostile response to the final consultation on the scheme ahead of its introduction in January.

Compliance officers for legal practice (COLPs) should be allowed to buy in independent external advice at their firm’s expense in the event of a conflict with management, according to two senior solicitor consultants.

The Law Society has taken the unusual step of investing in a company set up by a non-lawyer law firm partner to sell a groundbreaking web-based risk and compliance software package for solicitors.

The Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) is unlawful, unnecessary and unworkable and will be judicially reviewed if it goes ahead, criminal law barristers will warn this week in a response to the final consultation seen by this website.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has been “hoodwinked” into changing its rules on referrals to financial advisers and risks involving solicitors in the mis-selling of investment products, a former senior financial regulator has claimed.

The number of applications from law firms to enter the assigned risks pool in its last year is back to pre-crisis levels, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has reported. This year the profession is liable to pay the first £10m in claims that arise from the pool.

Complaints from competitors that a law firm is engaging in predatory pricing are difficult to deal with, the Solicitors Regulation Authority admitted last week. At the same time, regulators were urged to make it easier for firms to inform them about what other practices in their area were up to.