Solicitors

A record number of solicitors have been either struck off or suspended, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has revealed. However, the number of solicitors appearing before the tribunal has dropped sharply, possibly because of the SRA’s new powers to issue sanctions itself.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to roll out supervision of large City and national law firms through relationship management after a successful pilot. The year-long pilot also highlighted outsourcing as an issue to which the SRA needs to pay particular attention.

Our regular round-up of news you need to know includes the appeal court quashing an ILEX disciplinary ruling, delays for solicitors renewing practising certificates, a survey of young drivers on referral fees, a survey finding support for outsourcing and much more besides.

The legal education and training review, commissioned by the three main frontline legal regulators in November 2010, may not produce its final report until some point in 2013, it has emerged. Meanwhile, the academic body contracted to provide research has shut down, but the work will continue.

The controversial Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) will now go live in April 2012, it emerged last week. We can also reveal that contingency plans have been drawn up for the judiciary not playing its expected role in QASA.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has launched a new strategy aimed at ensuring the interests of consumers “sit at the heart of the legal services marketplace”. It is also working on a project to determine whether the legal profession is meeting the needs of the deaf and hard of hearing.

The launch of the controversial quality assurance scheme for criminal advocates is likely to be delayed, the Joint Advocacy Group has announced. “Some adjustments” to the scheme are likely “to ensure that there are not unintended consequences”.

The new compliance officers required under outcomes-focused regulation – which begins today – “will not be sacrificial lambs for the sins of the organisations they work in”, the chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority has stressed.

Just 53 law firms have failed to find professional indemnity insurance and so entered the assigned risks pool (ARP), provisional figures have shown. At the same stage last year, 409 firms had entered the ARP. Firms still have a month in which they can find secure insurance and backdate it to 1 October.

A solicitor will take his campaign against the Solicitors Regulation Authority for shutting down his practice to its front door on Wednesday with a protest outside of its Redditch headquarters. It follows the SRA’s failed attempt to strike out his High Court action seeking damages.

Almost a quarter of law firms in the assigned risks pool had already decided to close a week before the renewal deadline, while the Solicitors Regulation Authority has flagged up the “serious risk” of other firms practising without insurance.

A solicitor has hit out at a “nonsensical” ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority as Legal Futures research showed a small spike in complaints about law firm advertising this year. The ASA has dealt with five complaints about solicitors in 2011 so far, having had only 11 in total since 2007.

A non-lawyer partner at a Manchester law firm has developed what is claimed to be the first web-based risk and compliance software for the legal market and aims to reduce the burden on the compliance officers every law firm has to have under outcomes-focused regulation.

The number of claims against the Solicitors Compensation Fund arising out of mortgage fraud have shot up by 140%, it has emerged. However, the time lag in claims reaching the fund means the figures disguise a “marked decrease” in mortgage fraud cases, according to the SRA.

The Bar Council is once again not compliant with the rules on ensuring the independence of its regulatory arm, the Legal Services Board has decided – while the Law Society’s compliance remains unresolved. But the Bar Council has been given one more year to get its house in order.