Solicitors

The standard of criminal advocacy is “generally competent”, but that of solicitor-advocates and in-house barristers is inferior to the self-employed Bar, research among judges has found.

Slater & Gordon has been rebuked and handed a record fine of £80,000 for an alternative business structure for inspecting confidential client data during the Quindell deal.

A solicitor has been suspended from practice despite admitting to dishonestly fabricating a backdated letter to persuade the Solicitors Regulation Authority that she had sent it the previous year.

The Attorney General is to be asked to put a permanent stop to years of vexatious litigation pursued by a struck-off solicitor against the Law Society, Bar Council, senior judges and many others.

A solicitor has been fined £12,500 for improperly ending a client’s appeal against her murder conviction without instructions and then repeatedly ignoring the appeal court’s invitation to explain his actions.

A solicitor who lied in her application for a training contract at Weightmans and then for a new job at DLA Piper after qualifying has been struck off.

A solicitor who used £500,000 of money in his firm’s client account to feed his gambling addiction – although he paid most of it back in winnings – has been struck off.

A young personal injury solicitor who dishonestly backdated 23 documents over a nine-month period to conceal inactivity as she supposedly struggled to keep on top of her workload, has been struck off.

An events executive at a well-known London law firm who kept raffle prizes for herself has been banned from working in the profession.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s plans to reform professional indemnity insurance and the compensation fund put too much risk on consumers without any commensurate benefit, a watchdog has warned.

Law firms will have to publish their prices for a range of consumer and business services, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has decided, but they will not have to put their complaints records in the public domain. It comes alongside research showing consumers particularly wanted information on price and quality before choosing a lawyer.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has tempered its proposal to allow solicitors to set up their own law firms as soon as they qualify, as it unveiled the final wave of changes to its Handbook. This completes the two-year process of rewriting the handbook, which is set to be around 130 pages in total, more than 300 pages less than now.

The practising certificate fee for solicitors is set to be frozen this year, but contributions to bolster the Solicitors Compensation Fund are to more than double ahead of an expected rise in claims arising from their involvement in fraudulent investment schemes. The Law Society issued a consultation yesterday that laid out a proposed budget of £134.2m.

A dishonest solicitor who forged documents and stole clients’ mortgage payments after taking the reins of a law firm has been jailed for seven years and six months. Andrew John Davies, 34, was jailed at Bolton Crown Court having pleaded guilty to 42 charges including fraud, forgery and money laundering at an earlier hearing.

A solicitor who made offensive remarks in a private Facebook group has been rebuked and fined, while other unusual disciplinary decisions announced yesterday included a suspension for a barrister who got her clerk to lie about her availability for a hearing.