Competence

The High Court has dismissed a claim against a firm of solicitors, despite finding it negligent in failing to raise the absence of a covenant in restraint of competition during the purchase of a commercial property. It considered the lengths that a solicitor is expected to go to beyond facilitating the immediate transaction.

The barrister and law firm with the top High Court win rates in England and Wales will be named later this month, Legal Futures has learned. The names will be included in a report from US analysts Premonition.

Economic pressures forcing solicitors to ‘commoditise’ their advice “throw into sharp focus the need for standard form letters of advice to be clear in their exposition”, the Court of Appeal warned yesterday.

Leading legal academics are developing a blueprint for ethical in-house practice, amid growing evidence that general counsel are under increasing pressure to compromise their professional ethics.

There is a wide range of practice areas where solicitors can offer unbundled legal services, from actions against the police to civil litigation, the Law Society has suggested. It said firms could also use paralegals to act as McKenzie Friends in court.

Solicitors are not under a general duty to check the credit status of parties in a commercial transaction unless instructed to, the High Court has ruled. Who to trust in a business situation is “a commercial decision for the client to take and not the solicitor”.

The Law Society has called on the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) not to abandon the training contract, which it is said was viewed by other jurisdictions as the “gold standard”.

The Supreme Court has backed a law firm’s arguments that, following a breach of trust, it should have to pay in damages only the amount which the lender would have lost if the breach had not occurred.

Professor Avrom Sherr, one of the country’s leading legal academics, has said that “nobody listens to the Law Society” since it lost its regulatory role.

Legal education providers have warned that the possible introduction of a new, centralised assessment test for all would-be solicitors by the Solicitors Regulation Authority could be “a step back”.