Compliance & Regulation

The Legal Ombudsman was right to dismiss a complaint it thought better suited to be determined in court, a judge has ruled.

A solicitor who used his firm’s client account as a personal banking facility did not need to admit that he had damaged public trust, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has held.

Lawyers seem to have forgotten that the public interest trumps the client interest and this needs to change, Professor Stephen Mayson has argued.

A barrister who a court found had been fundamentally dishonest in making a personal injury claim has been disbarred.

Major changes to the way law firms hold client money, including not retaining interest and restricting the collection of fees in advance, were proposed yesterday by the SRA.

There are “reasons to be cautious” around the Solicitors Regulation Authority becoming more involved when law firms go through mergers and acquisitions, it said yesterday.

The 50/50 split between individual solicitors and firms in their funding of the SRA Compensation Fund should be changed to 70/30, the regulator has recommended.

The leading figure on legal ethics in the UK has called for the creation of an independent commission charged with improving “honesty, integrity and effectiveness in the use of law”.

A direct access barrister who impermissibly held a divorce client’s money and then did not pay all of it back has been suspended for 18 months by a disciplinary tribunal.

Barristers are wrongly stating that their work is covered by the money laundering regulations in their annual declarations to the Bar Standards Board, it has emerged.