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The Law Society yesterday usurped the Solicitors Regulation Authority plans to announce details of this year’s practising certificate renewal exercise. The 2011 renewal exercise was dogged by delays and IT problems.

IT project “cost overruns” have contributed to the Law Society budgeting for a £10m deficit this year, it has emerged. The 2011 accounts also reveal that chief executive Des Hudson received a 6.8% pay rise last year to £407,000 in total.

Hands up who feels sorry for the SRA. You at the back? Anyone? Just a smidgen of sympathy? I thought not – that certainly reflects what I hear from solicitors as I go out and about. The possibility of finding practitioners who might have been minded to give their regulator the benefit of the doubt has been extinguished by the practising certificate renewal fiasco. The Law Society has a long history of mucking up IT projects.

Our latest news round-up reports on a barrister jailed after stealing £72,500 from his chambers, more problems with the SRA’s online PC renewal system, surveys on fixed fees and compliance, and the appeal court upholding a ruling against a firm innocently caught up in mortgage fraud.