Other lawyers

The Legal Services Board has marked as “sufficient” action plans produced by legal regulators to introduce price transparency and release other information to the public to help with purchasing decisions. The verdict on the original action plans published at the end of June came in the wake of the regulators moving to the next stage of consulting on how they would implement transparency.

The Bar Standards Board will say today that new rules on publishing prices should extend to referral barristers as well as those handling public access work. It comes as the Council for Licensed Conveyancers also issued their plans for improving transparency to help the consumers of legal services.

The Lord Chancellor, David Lidington, has unexpectedly rejected the Legal Services Board’s recommendation that chartered accountants should be able to handle litigation, advocacy and legal instruments in taxation work. It is the first time the Ministry of Justice has rejected a regulatory extension of this nature,

A district judge has explained how he had to throw a McKenzie Friend out of his court after she disrupted proceedings and threatened complaints against him and the other side’s solicitors. Mary Bennett was aiding the husband in the final hearing of a wife’s application for financial remedies in a divorce.

The owner of a claims management company fined £175,000 for cold-calling consumers and described as demonstrating “the worst excesses of the industry”, has now been banned as a director for six years. The Information Commissioner’s Office received 5,535 complaints in the space of just four months.

A trainee solicitor has been handed a suspended jail sentence after being convicted of providing illegal immigration advice and services. The judge said he had set out to deceive vulnerable clients seeking help with immigration applications.

Lawyers are among those who could face prosecution if they fail to report information that could undermine UK financial sanctions, after a change to the law that came into force this week. “Independent legal professionals”, along with trust or company service providers, accountants and others are now captured by the European Union Financial Sanctions Regulations 2017.

The turnover of personal injury claims management companies (CMCs) has continued to tumble over the past year, falling 41% in just two years to £182m, according to the Ministry of Justice, which also highlighted how CMCs that offer damages-based agreements are struggling to comply with the law.

The Legal Services Board has given the frontline regulators largely positive reviews of their performance, but warned the Solicitors Regulation Authority that it will be monitoring the impact of its controversial decision to end public and press access to board meetings

Legal regulators have responded cautiously to the Competition and Markets Authority’s recommendations on price transparency, pledging to pilot regulatory requirements and test their effects on the lawyers and firms they regulate. They promised to implement controversial measures to encourage lawyers to publish prices if possible.