Indemnity insurance

Solicitors running two firms caught out by changes to the indemnity insurance rules and the closure of the assigned risks pool in 2012-13 have been fined by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for failing to wind-down their practices in an orderly manner.

A judge has launched an extraordinary attack on “by far the worst solicitor witness I have ever seen giving evidence in the witness box”. Edward Abenson told Legal Futures that the judge was “very harsh” on him.

Cyber security is becoming a central issue for professional indemnity insurers, and firms will in future need to demonstrate what protections they have against cyber criminals before they are offered cover, a leading broker has predicted.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) will focus more on individual regulation and less on firms in the year ahead, chief executive Paul Philip has said.

Professional negligence as a discrete body of law could disappear if restrictions on the liability of professionals continue to be swept aside as social attitudes towards them also change, Lord Justice Jackson has predicted.

All but one of the entities authorised by the Bar Standards Board since the beginning of this month consist of a single barrister, with the other made up of two barristers, it has emerged.

Almost a half of law firms using insurance brokers to secure their indemnity cover in last year’s renewal said brokers failed to reveal their commissions, a Law Society survey has revealed.

A High Court judge has found that although international law firm Baker & McKenzie was negligent in advice it gave on Mexican tax law, it was not liable to pay damages to the company involved.

Lawyers who act on instructions in threatening potential intellectual property infringers with action are to be exempt from being sued when the threat turns out to be groundless, after the government recently gave the go-ahead for law reforms.

The High Court has allowed media law firm Olswang to escape being named as a defendant in a $400m (£267m) claim relating to work completed before the partnership converted to LLP status when it upheld a refusal to correct a mistake in naming it as a party.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is investigating two law firms which it said should have closed at the end of last year, having failed to find indemnity insurance.

Solicitors are not under a general duty to check the credit status of parties in a commercial transaction unless instructed to, the High Court has ruled. Who to trust in a business situation is “a commercial decision for the client to take and not the solicitor”.

The High Court last week threw out a £71m claim against trade union practice Thompsons which sought to blame it for the collapse of a law firm which had tried to bring group litigation on behalf of thousands of miners.

A total of 49 firms are heading for closure after failing to secure indemnity insurance, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has said. This compares with 138 which were forced to shut for the same reason last year.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has rejected a proposal by the Law Society to extend the additional indemnity run-off cover provided by the Solicitors Indemnity Fund (SIF) for a further three years until 2023.