Solicitors

Fiona Onasanya, the Labour MP and solicitor jailed yesterday for three months for perverting the course of justice, has been told she is likely to be struck off.

A young solicitor who was “deceived, pressured, bullied and manipulated” has been struck off, despite being the one to blow the whistle on misconduct in her firm.

Two solicitors have been struck off for dishonestly obtaining rail travel without paying – one a newly qualified and the other who had not practised since soon after he qualified almost 15 years earlier.

An experienced duty solicitor who drove to advise at a police station while over the drink-drive limit has been rebuked and fined £2,000 by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The High Court has rejected an appeal by a former solicitor who claimed that the disciplinary tribunal which struck him off should have dismissed the prosecution because of his mental ill-health.

The Law Society has said it is “deeply concerned” that new rules proposed by the Legal Services Board could largely prevent it from either lobbying or criticising the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

The Legal Services Board is not putting enough pressure on the frontline regulators to publish details of lawyers’ disciplinary records on their online registers, it has been claimed.

A solicitor who took almost £1m from the estates of dead clients has been jailed for six years. He charged hugely inflated fees to deal with probate, in one case charging 50 times the estimated fee.

The appeal system for failed asylum-seekers has been “heavily abused by some lawyers”, the former Home Office director-general of immigration enforcement has claimed.

A struck-off solicitor who became a claims manager, and was fined £220,000 for cold calling, cannot return to the profession, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has decided.

The highly contentious Leigh Day disciplinary case has come to an end with the Solicitors Regulation Authority paying the firm £1m in costs after the regulator’s unsuccessful appeal.

The High Court has rejected an appeal by a solicitor who “facilitated” immigration claims which were an abuse of process and “effectively ignored” judges’ warnings to change his behaviour.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is “not sufficiently transparent” in explaining its decisions at board level, the Legal Services Board has said, while ticking off other regulators too.

A solicitor who failed to check whether his clients were politically exposed persons, in the first disciplinary matter to involve infamous offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca, has been fined £45,000.

A solicitor has been fined for calling a would-be client an “asshole”, “crazy” and “a certifiable nutcase” in correspondence with the man, his partner and the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners.