Solicitors

A solicitor involved in conveyancing transactions that resulted in the non-payment of £2m in stamp duty land tax has accepted a rebuke from the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Now defunct Leeds firm Dixon Law Solicitors acted in 47 transactions over two and a half years that used two SDLT avoidance schemes,

Solicitors’ professional indemnity insurers paid out around £2bn due to negligence claims in the 10 years to 2014, startling new figures released yesterday by the Solicitors Regulation Authority revealed. The regulator said that around 142,000 claims were made in that decade, one in five of which was successful.

An ex-solicitor has been found guilty and jailed for five years for five counts of fraud by false representation after he hijacked a law firm’s identity – his second spell in jail for fraud after he previously stole from his own firm’s client account. The conviction came at the end of an 11-day trial.

Placing law firms’ complaints data and insurance claims in the public domain are among the “initial ideas” published today by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to improve transparency in the legal market – but it is not currently planning to mandate firms to publish prices.

The High Court has granted insurance company LV= permission to bring committal proceedings against solicitors from a defunct law firm after two starkly contrasting medical reports emerged in a road traffic case they were handling.

Solicitors who ceded control of their firms to non-lawyers – in one instance they claimed their practice had been taken over by a criminal gang – have been sanctioned by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. In the first case, it struck off three partners following mortgage frauds that have already cost the profession nearly £3m.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has made a direct plea to government to use next month’s Autumn Statement to make good on the plan announced in last year’s to grant it full independence from the Law Society.

Three partners at well-known London law firm Fladgate have been sanctioned by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for allowing its client account to be used as a banking facility. Just over £4m went in and out of client account without any underlying legal transaction, in breach of the accounts rules.

Two City solicitors struck off following a rare private prosecution before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal have been struck off for a second time, two years after the High Court remitted the verdict but upheld a finding of dishonesty.

A solicitor-led investment consultancy has sought an alternative business structure licence as part of its plan to expand and exploit what it called a “gap in the market” for lawyers in advisory services. It has two solicitor partners and until now offered unreserved legal activities.

Significant numbers of new advocates are “weaker than might be hoped on basic knowledge” of ethical rules, a major report has found. The report also found that ethics training before and after qualification was “insufficiently robust or frequent to enable confident ethical practice amongst new advocates”.

A solicitor who ignored restrictions on his practising certificate and worked as a sole practitioner when he was not meant to has been suspended by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. He told the tribunal that he was “only trying to make a living” and that the restrictions meant “very few firms were willing to take him on”.

The Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) – the centralised test proposed for would-be practitioners – will be split into two stages, with the first consisting mainly of computer-based questions, the Solicitors Regulation Authority revealed yesterday.

Legal executives are increasingly less likely to want to train as solicitors, switching to a trainee contract after having been a paralegal can involve a decrease in contact with clients, a major survey has found. The research said workplace experience helps to develop the competences needed to be a solicitor.

A trainee solicitor who misled clients that their claims were being progressed when they had actually been struck out, and also sought to mislead the court, has accepted a rebuke and £1,000 fine to avoid a referral to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.