Regulation

Legal professional privilege was waived by the liquidators of a company when they released a file to a litigant to help her sue her law firm for negligence, the High Court has ruled.

A solicitor who twice misled a potential employer into believing he was still in a job – when in fact he had been sacked six months earlier – has been suspended indefinitely.

A virtual set of tax and revenue-specialist barristers has multiplied from its two founders to 11 members since it launched last summer, with several based overseas as it looks to build a global practice.

Firms getting into new areas of work because of the impact of Covid, along with handling funds generated through the legal sale of cannabis abroad, are among emerging money laundering risks.

The possibility of negative interest rates moved a step closer yesterday amid continuing uncertainty over whether law firms could pass on to clients the cost of holding their money.

The managing director of the latest law firm to become an employee ownership trust has said the biggest barrier is the “ignorance” of solicitors.

A solicitor whose “reckless mismanagement” of her law firm’s finances damaged the profession’s reputation has been struck off, and her COFA banned for “manifest incompetence”.

A solicitor who lied to a lender, a client, his law firm and the Land Registry to cover up the lack of progress made on his clients’ matters – but blamed his secretary – has been struck off.

New technologies such as biometrics, machine learning and artificial intelligence can now form part of the anti-money laundering armoury, law firms have been told.

The Legal Ombudsman is “setting itself up to fail” by proposing to give itself more work than it can cope with and asking for an “extraordinary high” budget increase of 19%.