Compliance & Regulation

Solicitors are still engaging in dubious practices around non-disclosure agreements and strategic lawsuits against public participation, despite regulatory warnings, it was claimed last week.

There is a “higher level of confidence” among law firm buyers and “clear signs that the scale and pace” of M&A will increase in 2024, a report has found.

Members of the public may “reasonably question” the ‘wait and see’ approach of the SRA to disciplinary action in the Post Office scandal, a regulatory expert and former SRA manager has said.

The SRA is going ahead with plans to introduce the same system of fee caps for law firms handling financial services mis-selling claims as the Financial Conduct Authority has for CMCs.

A law firm administrator who paid herself £1,450 using pre-signed cheques, which she claimed was to refund money she had spent on office tea and coffee, has been barred from the profession.

A barrister has been suspended for six months after being convicted for what a tribunal described as “a sustained, angry and violent physical assault” which was “clearly the result of heavy drinking”.

Two law firms that have not had their anti-money laundering policies in order for several years have been fined by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

A law firm that held nearly £600,000 in hundreds of residual client balances dating back 28 years has been fined by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The SRA today starts a conversation about the future of client protection arrangements, the extreme end of which could see the end of firms holding client money and of the Compensation Fund.

A solicitor has been jailed for two years after admitting abusing her position to steal tens of thousands of pounds from two vulnerable people, one of whom was her father.