Regulation

The Bar Council is still unhappy with the price transparency regime proposed by the Bar Standards Board (BSB), despite the regulator’s decision to limit publication of information about fees to public access work. The revised rules came under fire from… Read More

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is “not sufficiently transparent” in explaining its decisions at board level, the Legal Services Board has said, while ticking off other regulators too.

A solicitor who failed to check whether his clients were politically exposed persons, in the first disciplinary matter to involve infamous offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, has been fined £45,000.

Chartered legal executives operate on a par with solicitors and it is only “professional snobbery” stopping them from being part of the solution to many current systemic problems.

A solicitor has been fined for calling a would-be client an “asshole”, “crazy” and “a certifiable nutcase” in correspondence with the man, his partner and the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners.

Efforts to encourage lawyers to make more suspicious activity reports are not succeeding, with the number of reports from the legal sector down 12% last year.

The Law Society has reminded solicitors that their duty to act in their client’s best interests can be trumped by other obligations when drafting non-disclosure agreements.

A solicitor who was the ‘go to’ lawyer for a gang of criminals because he would not ask too many questions about where their money came from has been jailed for seven years.

A solicitor who said his unauthorised firm was acting only for “family and friends” has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, which said this made no difference.

An experienced solicitor escaped with an indefinite suspension after a tribunal accepted her plea that she had falsified a client’s sick note while suffering from mental ill-health.