Competence

A new third-party litigation funder enters the market today promising to target far lower-value commercial disputes than other providers, and not take a percentage of damages as its fee – with a professional negligence expert warning that lawyers could face legal action for not considering their clients’ funding options.

QCs should lose their title if they fall below an acceptable standard, the Legal Services Consumer Panel suggested today in a report that calls on legal bodies that run voluntary quality schemes to improve checks on lawyers’ continuing competence so as to boost consumer confidence.

The body representing licensed conveyancers has launched a quality assurance scheme uniquely linked to their regulator in a bid to help detect mortgage fraud. The move by the Society of Licensed Conveyancers goes significantly further than the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme.

New figures from the Solicitors Regulation Authority indicate that the long-predicted wave of claims against solicitors over mortgage fraud is fast becoming a reality. There are now 770 open claims against the Solicitors Compensation Fund relating to mortgage fraud.

Solicitors have no need to investigate an elderly person’s capacity to contract without good reason and any such duty on them would be “insulting and unnecessary”, a High Court judge has said. Mrs Justice Sharp said the claimant had failed to establish that a lack of capacity “would have been evident to a reasonably competent solicitor”.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) has passed a complaint to the Criminal Cases Review Commission after a solicitor and a barrister’s errors potentially led to a man’s conviction for theft, in one of 365 cases that the service has informally resolved so far, it has emerged.

Solicitors innocently caught up in frauds on mortgage lenders can find themselves liable for the whole loss if they release funds before receiving documents needed to prove title, even if the lender is negligent.

There is a strong case for some lawyers facing periodic reaccreditation and for creating a single badge to help consumers distinguish between regulated and unregulated providers, the Legal Services Consumer Panel said in a report published today. Responding to a request from the Legal Services Board for consumer perspectives on quality, the panel drew on consumer research it commissioned and found support for lawyers undergoing “a regular MOT”.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) will seek to determine complaints that cross over into professional negligence, it has emerged. Chief ombudsman Adam Sampson said that while its predecessor bodies, such as the Legal Complaints Service, would shy away from complaints about the quality of legal advice offered, the Legal Services Act “makes no mention of any such limitation of our powers”.

The move from regulating individuals to regulating entities means threatens to make undertakings less effective than in the past and so recipients need to take extra care, explains Iain Miller of Bevan Brittan.