Solicitors

The country’s largest trade union has criticised the Law Society for planning redundancies instead of furloughing staff, as well as slashing its presence outside of London.

The SRA has come under fire for how it deals with sole practitioners and solicitors at small firms, with the chair of the Society of Black Lawyers saying they were seen as “easy targets”.

A solicitor who admitted that he “had gone too far and had done too much” by practising while suspended has been struck off, while his supervising partner has been suspended.

This year’s indemnity insurance renewal season has not been as bad as some had predicted, but there has been an uptick in mergers and acquisitions, the SRA has revealed.

Members of the public still do not “fully understand” the role of the Solicitors Regulation Authority and leads to complaints about its service, the organisation’s independent reviewer has found.

A former partner at Womble Bond Dickinson has been fined for using the firm’s client account as a banking facility, as has a current partner who unwittingly took over after he left.

The change last year allowing solicitors to practise from unregulated businesses will force traditional law firms to improve their service offering, the Competition and Markets Authority has been told.

A solicitor who moved client funds around different accounts to hide the money he was taking for himself – and caused pay-outs from the SRA Compensation Fund – has been struck off.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority may not allow solicitors to pass on to clients the cost of holding their money if negative interest rates become a reality, an official has suggested.

Employment tribunals may in future need to recognise that homeworking has become an established ‘reasonable adjustment’ to working practices for disabled people, including lawyers.

A solicitor who downloaded thousands of indecent images of children and shared some of the material online has been handed a suspended prison sentence.

A solicitor has been struck off after trying to intimidate an officer from the Solicitors Regulation Authority by saying he was “genius level talent” who would sue the officer and “end the SRA”.

The High Court has refused to aggregate as one claim various actions a Yorkshire law firm’s indemnity insurer is facing because of a multi-million pound fraud run by one of its partners.

An immigration lawyer who made what he described as “huge money” by facilitating a dubious international finance transaction has been suspended indefinitely by a tribunal.

A solicitor who overcharged two estates by £275,000 has been struck off, but his partner – and younger brother – has avoided the same sanction after saying he was “too trusting”.