Regulation

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has today shut down a 16-office law firm consolidator with 180 staff across the country. It is highly unusual for the regulator to intervene in such a large practice.

A “small number” of Bar students were affected by technical issues that prevented them from completing their first online exam, the BSB said yesterday amid a stream of complaints.

The lawyers and others who devise and market ineffective tax avoidance schemes are often breaking the law and a few legislative tweaks will make it easier to prosecute them, MPs have claimed.

Barristers may be keen to get back to work but they are not going back to chambers, and nearly a third of sets have given or are considering giving partial notice on their leases.

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants has decided to withdraw from legal services regulation and contract it out to CILEx Regulation, in the first move of its kind.

The president of the Queen’s Bench Division has strongly criticised lawyers at US firm McDermott Will & Emery after they allowed a trial to be live-streamed to observers without the court’s permission.

A highly experienced chartered legal executive who forged her client’s signature after forgetting to ask the client to sign a consent order has been banned from working for law firms.

The Law Society recorded an operating loss of £5.5m on its representative work for solicitors in the last financial year, its annual report has shown. It was part of an overall deficit of £9.3m.

A one-time trainee solicitor who violently raped one woman and attempted to rape another has been banned from the profession. His sentence was increased to 16 years in May.

The owner of a personal injury firm has been struck off after retaining nearly £500,000 in disbursements to keep his firm afloat after it was badly hit by the LASPO reforms.