Solicitors

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has lost its second policy director in three months, Legal Futures can reveal. Richard Collins has joined Crispin Passmore in leaving the organisation.

A solicitor who faked attendance notes in an ultimately unsuccessful bid to ward off a negligence claim has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

A solicitor has been fined £20,000 after loaning his client money at an annual interest rate of 60% and eventually repossessing her house, selling it and making a return of nearly twice what he lent her.

The Legal Services Board should focus on tackling sexual harassment in the workplace instead of pushing its agenda of ‘change for change’s sake’, the Law Society has said.

The president of the family division has rejected a wife’s application to admit the statement of a ‘whistleblower’ inside her former husband’s legal team who sent the court privileged information.

The clock on a possible ban on referral fees from lawyers to estate agents has started running after new guidance on disclosure was published by National Trading Standards.

An experienced solicitor has been struck off after accepting a caution for possession of banned drugs, failing to report it to the regulator, and misleading police.

A “stressed” solicitor has been struck off after receiving a suspended prison sentence for pretending claims had concluded and paying clients damages they had not in fact been awarded.

Now is not the “appropriate time” to embark on wholesale reform of the Legal Services Act, the Law Society has told the independent review into the regulation of legal services.

The solicitor who headed Bolton personal injury firm Coops Law – which bought controversial practice Asons – has been suspended for the way it took on 6,000 files without clients’ permission.

A solicitor who was being groomed to take over a Liverpool law firm has been jailed for a £13,400 fraud, leaving his former boss with an “indescribable” feeling of betrayal.

A solicitor has been rebuked and fined after receiving a police caution for importing a class C drug, while a paralegal was rebuked and banned for lying about her qualifications on her CV.

A property solicitor who forged a Land Registry document as part of a dispute with a business partner has been jailed three years and eight months, along with her husband.

The new chair of the Solicitors Regulation Authority is set to dial down its strident calls for complete structural independence from the Law Society. Anna Bradley was speaking six weeks into the job.

National firm Simpson Millar has set up a team within its professional negligence department to handle potential actions against solicitors who failed to warn leasehold clients of damaging clauses.