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Christmas has been and gone and the festivities of New Year are over. Despite the hangover, is the real headache yet to come? Possibly, if you’re starting 2013 as your firm’s compliance office for legal practice and/or for finance and administration (COLP/COFA). here might well be a surge of activity and enthusiasm at the start but as time goes on and other priorities come to the fore, the risk of neglecting the fitness regime increases. This can’t be allowed to happen. So what should COLPs and COFAs be looking to do in the first month of their new role?

Around 250 law firms have yet to even start the process of nominating their compliance officers and face having their authorisation removed in the New Year, the Solicitors Regulation Authority announced yesterday.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has received “too many” compliance officer nominations where the individuals concerned have failed to disclose serious disciplinary issues that make them unsuitable for the role, as it warns that hundreds of firms will start 2013 without officers in place.

Our regular round-up of important news nuggets includes the newest SRA-licensed ABS, an advice contract for the Co-op, a survey of top firms on how they are changing, a probe of SRA files to identify any racial discrimination, heavy fine for spam texters and much more.

It has been a week of strong words. First of all we had Bar Council chairman Michael Todd QC sounding off about the Legal Services Board, and then on Tuesday Solicitors Regulation Authority chairman Charles Plant was uncompromising about his view of the “small but significant” number of solicitors who are not good enough to be in practice. Let’s start with Mr Plant, who does like to drop the occasional grenade to liven things up. In some ways it is hardly controversial to suggest that out of nearly 130,000 practising solicitors, there are some bad apples – but the problem appears a lot bigger than that.