Solicitors

When the profession ditched the Solicitors Indemnity Fund (SIF), a compelling reason for the move was that many good firms were paying for the failures of the few. Now, a decade later, solicitors are back in exactly the same position. Only, the ‘few’ could become substantially more over the next few months.

The Law Society has announced plans for a preliminary scoping study into whether the Law Society should develop or endorse qualifications for paralegals.

The Legal Services Board has set out its plans to recoup its running costs, and those of the Office for Legal Complaints, based on a per capita basis and of complaints against each part of the legal profession.

The government’s decision last week to scrap training grants for would-be legal aid lawyers was as inevitable as it was sad, and was all the more pointed for coming the day after the Association of Graduate Recruiters named law firms as the highest-paying graduate employers.

Pressure is growing on the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to find alternatives to marching in and shutting down law firms in trouble, Legal Futures has discovered. A blueprint to reduce the number of interventions – which cost around £100,000 a time – has been put forward.

The Law Society is set to collect nearly £124 million from solicitors in the next year, a 13% fall on last year due to a major reduction in compensation fund contributions, it announced this week.

More than £5 million has been paid by solicitors to former miners, with much more to come, it emerged today. Nearly 100,000 people have made or will make complaints about deductions wrongly made from the damages received by miners from government compensation schemes.

The performance of the Legal Complaints Service (LCS) will provide a solid foundation from which the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) can build, the Legal Services Ombudsman said today.

The Law Society has approved a £22m outlay on a new IT system for the Solicitors Regulation Authority that will hit solicitors in their practising certificate fees, Legal Futures can reveal.

Legal Futures’ revelation that the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has agreed that professional indemnity insurers will no longer have to pay the defence costs of solicitors facing disciplinary proceedings is a major blow to those likely to face sanctions in the future. It provides proof, if proof were needed, of how out of touch with the profession the SRA can be.

For tech-savvy firms, alternative business structures will highlight the power of partnerships within the conveyancing sector, says David Kempster, marketing director at MDA SearchFlow.

Professional indemnity insurers will no longer have to pay the defence costs of solicitors facing disciplinary proceedings, bolstering the case for a legal defence union, Legal Futures can reveal.

A row is brewing between the Law Society and the Legal Services Consumer Panel over the make-up of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) board, Legal Futures can reveal. The Law Society says it has no intention of taking active steps to remove the solicitor majority on the board until the current members’ terms end in 2013.

There is no reason to reduce the level of the guideline hourly rates so as to strip out the cost of referral fees, an influential committee has concluded. The Advisory Committee on Civil Costs found no evidence that referral fees are too high and said claims management companies do not make excessive profits.

The individual practising certificate fee is set to be cut by more than 60% after the Solicitors Regulation Authority board approved a new fees policy last week.