solicitor

It would be easy to think of dozens of bad-taste humorous comments to make about the conduct of Iain Farrimond but to do so would be terribly cruel. The circumstances in which he has found himself are awful but so serious that there can be no alternative to serious punishment.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has published its November 2016 order that MOHAMMED ZAHIR UDDIN, sole director of Your Right Solicitors Limited, be struck off. His failings are legion and, even, disturbing.

The Legal Services Board is supposed to be the regulator of regulators for the legal profession in England and Wales. Its leader is not a lawyer and has, therefore, never been in practice. When the Legal Services Board wanted a review of "The Cab Rank Rule," they turned to a couple of academics and told them to read about it and write about what they found. They were both eminently qualified (not), having written a lot of stuff, read a lot more (quoting a lot of it in the stuff they wrote). Oh, and neither of them had ever held a responsible post in law or, for that matter, outside academia. And it's been a pointless exercise in proving the obvious, says retired solicitor Nigel Morris-Cotterill

The Law Society of England and Wales long ago began a system of registering those that wanted to demonstrate they met certain criteria. It was a voluntary quality assurance scheme. It was, at the time, seen as a bit of a waste of time by professionals who had extensive experience and new what they were doing, a way for the second rank to gain credibility that they did not, fully, deserve on merit. Gradually, the idea mutated away from a marketing tool to part of regulation and it is now a compulsory registration of specialists in certain areas. The latest to fall under the compulsory requirement is Solicitor-Advocates. And disturbingly, many have not signed up with only days to go.