Solicitors

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has painted a “generally positive” picture of law firms specialising in asylum work, but uncovered serious weaknesses on referrals, fees and the handling of judicial reviews.

The status and quality of legal representation for children before the Youth Court need to be raised first by an increase in legal aid rates and then by mandatory training for all solicitors and barristers appearing for them, a government-commissioned review has recommended.

A solicitor who retained nearly £50,000 of client money for up to five years instead of paying professional disbursements has accepted a rebuke and fine to halt her referral to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

We round up news stories from the week we haven’t had room to cover, including more sanctions for solicitors caught up in dodgy investment schemes, a new chair for the Legal Services Consumer Panel, a barrister being disbarred over payments to himself, advice on price transparency, and much more.

E-mail hacks of conveyancing transactions are the most common cybercrime in the legal sector, with £7m of client losses reported in the last year, according to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. It said that three-quarters of cybercrimes reported to the SRA in the 12 months are some form of ‘Friday afternoon’ fraud.

A solicitor who did not report his conviction for assault to the Solicitors Regulation Authority has agreed to remove himself from the profession for three years. According to a regulatory settlement agreement published by the SRA, he also pleaded guilty to driving a vehicle while unfit.

A Hull solicitor has become the latest to be struck off after borrowing millions from the controversial Axiom Legal Financing Fund which have not been paid back. He drew down £3.15m of a £20m facility to prop up the firm, which accountants Baker Tilly had declared to be insolvent.

Some 810 solicitors from England and Wales will have been admitted in Ireland by the end of 2016 to protect their status in a post-Brexit Europe, figures from Dublin have revealed. The Law Society of Ireland said there were few signs at the moment of any of them taking out practising certificates or their firms opening offices in the country.

A male solicitor has been found guilty of discussing with a vulnerable female client a third his age that she might make good an unpaid bill with a topless photo shoot and possibly sexual activity. He was also found to have watched pornography in his office with her.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has spelt out to MPs the many risks of Brexit to the legal market – to clients, solicitors, law firms, foreign lawyers, the UK as a legal centre and the cause of liberalisation generally. The regulator said this strengthened the case for regulatory reform.

A man who tried to get a vulnerable client to loan him money – shortly after the will-writing firm he worked for became an alternative business structure – has been banned from working in the profession after it reported him to its new regulator.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has struck off a solicitor who borrowed £125,000 from longstanding clients to bail out his failing business and failed to mention that his wife had a prior charge over the firm’s assets. He also did not insist they take independent legal advice.

Bar Standards Board (BSB) entity regulation is “significantly cheaper and simpler” for sole practitioners and better for clients, according to a solicitor whose start-up law firm is to be regulated by the BSB. She said its regulation was “more client friendly” than that of the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

A solicitor who hid a wasted costs order against his firm by faking a fee invoice on another matter so as to create a surplus he used to pay it, has been struck off. He said he had been too embarrassed to admit the £1,500 wasted costs order to his managers.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has asked the Competition and Markets Authority for advice on how it could stimulate more use of comparison websites in the legal market, saying there was consumer demand for more of such tools to help consumers choose lawyers.