News

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There has been a sharp increase in the numbers of law firms closed and solicitors struck off, Legal Futures has discovered. Figures from the Solicitors Regulation Authority show it intervened in 31% more firms in the year to 31 March 2010, while there was a 58% jump in strike-offs by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

Anna Buttimore, administrator of lawyers’ support charity LawCare, considers the stresses that finding yourself in an ethical dilemma – such as blowing the whistle on possible wrongdoing at your firm – can cause and where to seek help.

This week’s Question of Ethics from the Solicitors Regulation Authority looks at whether there are circumstances in which you can decline to comply with your client’s instructions.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) will be able to formally rebuke solicitors and fine them up to £2,000 from next month, it has been confirmed. However, the potential conflict between the civil standard of proof that will be applied in such cases and the criminal standard used by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal – which will hear appeals against SRA decisions – has not yet been resolved and is likely to require further work.

The Law Society is offering staff at its Legal Complaints Service (LCS) financial incentives to join the new Legal Ombudsman service, Legal Futures can reveal. The Society has pledged a year’s worth of “bridging payments” to those who move over, which will go some of the way to making up the difference between their current salary and the lower wage the ombudsman is offering.

This week’s Question of Ethics looks at what a solicitor should do with a request to withhold a beneficiary’s legacy due to the likelihood that he will spend it all on drink, raising the issue of using client account as a banking facility.

A row is brewing between the Law Society and Legal Services Board over the wind-down of the Legal Complaints Service, Legal Futures can reveal. Law Society chief executive Des Hudson has told us that the LSB’s insistence that the LCS’s current performance targets stay in place as it heads towards closure, despite dwindling staff, is “unthoughtful and an error of judgement”.

The board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority today pushed ahead with reforms to the assigned risks pool (ARP) despite the threat of a legal challenge from the Black Solicitors Network. March’s “in principle” decision to close the ARP to new firms and halve the length of time firms can spend in it to a year was confirmed after the board considered a full equality impact assessment which concluded that both proposals had a potential adverse impact on race equality.

Nearly two-thirds of law firms saw their professional indemnity insurance (PII) premiums go up last year, Law Society research has found. The survey of 240 law firms also found evidence of “a growing divide in the PII market”, with smaller firms and black and minority ethnic (BME) firms finding renewal tougher than the wider profession.

Separate surveys from Sweet & Maxwell and accountants BDO indicate that confidence is returning to the big law firms, with renewed interest in mergers and lateral hires, while also scaling back further plans for redundancies. But cross-selling and tighter credit control are also on the agenda.