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The Law Society has failed in a bid to block a High Court action against it for negligent misrepresentation, after a bogus solicitor got himself listed on the society’s Find a Solicitor website and stole money from a house purchaser.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority needs to consider alternatives to intervening in failing law firms, the Law Society has said, while accepting the “emergency” need for the regulator to dip into the Compensation Fund to pay for the unexpectedly high cost of interventions this year.

The “popular myth” that conveyancing is low value is not borne out by the evidence, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has found. But property work is continuing to cause the regulator problems, with stamp duty land tax schemes and ‘right to buy’ negligence litigation firmly on its radar.

Scrapping the ban on solicitors referring clients to tied financial advisers would “make them prey to every tied or multi-tied product salesperson in the land”, leading to massive claims on the compensation fund and negligence actions, the SRA has been warned.

The cost of practising as a solicitor will rise well above inflation this year, mainly to ensure the Law Society has the funds to compensate the victims of fraud, but also to make up the cost of IT project overruns.