Compliance & Regulation

An investment manager at the heart of the Axiom Legal Financing Fund fraud has been jailed for eight years having being found guilty of fraudulent trading after a retrial.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s guidance on SLAPPs may go too far in requiring practitioners to ascertain the truth of their client’s case, a senior barrister has suggested.

The Legal Services Board has outlined its “high expectation” of the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Bar Standards Board taking regulatory action after the Post Office inquiry ends.

The SSB Group scandal – which has seen former clients pursued for costs of claims when they thought they had ATE insurance – has now extended to another collapsed firm, Pure Legal.

It is wrong that no law firms have been prosecuted for criminal breaches of anti-money laundering rules “despite the mountains of evidence”, the shadow foreign secretary has said.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority spent £20m closing down a record number of law firms last year, according to new figures.

A barrister who sent “grossly offensive” private Instagram messages to his former partner following the breakdown of a “toxic” relationship has been reprimanded by a Bar disciplinary tribunal.

A prosecuting barrister suspended for “unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature” towards a “very vulnerable” female defendant acted intentionally rather than recklessly, a tribunal has ruled.

CILEX switching regulator to the Solicitors Regulation Authority may be a good idea but both have failed to provide the evidence to prove it, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said.

White students are almost twice as likely to be sponsored by a law firm through law school than Asian and Black students, major new research for the Solicitors Regulation Authority has found.

A barrister has been reprimanded by a Bar disciplinary tribunal, after being convicted in Malawi of attempting to export hemp to the UK.

A solicitor who stole cash from a vulnerable client using her debit card while acting under a lasting power of attorney has been struck off.

A solicitor who misled a vulnerable family law client into sending explicit photographs of herself to his personal mobile phone has been struck off.

The number of complaints received by law firms went up by about a fifth between 2019 and 2023, the SRA has found – but averages out only at four per practice.

Efforts by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to speed up investigations are falling short of some of the targets introduced last year, it has emerged.