Solicitors

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s is planning to increase its power to fine law firms from £2,000 to £250m, and to £50m for individuals, Legal Futures can reveal. The Law Society has described the move as “misconceived”.

Chambers with fewer than 10 staff and/or members should not have to publish the results of the diversity survey that they all have to complete this year, their regulator is to tell the Legal Services Board.

Organisations whose in-house solicitors provide reserved legal activities to people other than their employer – such as insurers, associations and local authorities – will have to decide for themselves whether by law they need to become alternative business structures, according to the SRA.

The vast majority of MPs are concerned that their constituents may not understand what legal services are regulated and which are not, new research has found. It also identified concern that there is insufficient redress for consumers of legal services.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to issue best-practice guidelines to solicitors and firms it regulates about being deaf aware, after new research showed that legal services were often inaccessible to people with hearing loss.

The Bar Standards Board is formally to seek the introduction of an aptitude test for prospective Bar professional training course students from this autumn, setting the pass rate at a level that would eliminate the weakest 10% of students.

The Bar Standards Board has given way on the final outstanding issue on the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates and it is now to begin in the summer. Plea-only advocates, who had been at the centre of a major disagreement, will not have to undergo judicial assessment.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to consider retaining the minimum salary for trainee solicitors at the level of the national minimum wage after discovering that without it trainees would be classed as apprentices and so could be paid just £2.60 an hour in their first year – less than £5,000.

Six criminal law barristers have set up a chambers structured as a partnership and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Artesian Law is already looking to expand due to the number of instructions it has received.

The prospect of paying referral fees in personal injury becoming a criminal offence seemingly disappeared last night, while the government defeated a bid to exempt not-for-profits from the ban and outlined its plans to crack down on unsolicited PI marketing.

Mid-tier law firms are over-engineering their risk management and compliance functions, spending more than both bigger and smaller practices for far less return, new research from Lockton has claimed.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has called upon the ongoing Legal Education and Training Review to propose a revalidation scheme for lawyers. At the same event, delegates were told that judicial evaluation in the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates is flawed.

The Law Society has warned the Legal Services Board that it is overstepping its role as an oversight body by trying to become a market regulator. The society said the board plans for the future suggested an “inappropriately proactive approach for an oversight regulator”.

The Legal Services Board has given the clearest hint yet that it is supporting the position of solicitors in the row over the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates. Legal Futures also understands that the LSB is pushing the Bar Standards Board to accept a compromise.

The form that allows law firms to nominate their compliance officers for legal practice and for finance and administration should go live in the next six weeks, the Solicitors Regulation Authority said yesterday, while also revealing some of the information it will require about them.