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solicitors

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (like the trendy lot they are they don't use the apostrophe that good grammar demands) seems utterly determined to set itself at odds with the profession it regulates. A litany of complaints against its seemingly never-ending list of demands, many of which are costly, is playing out over the requirement that solicitors' practices with a website add a so-called "badge" to their website. The SRA seems to be functioning in a dangerous state of ignorance and arrogance. Solicitors are growling but they are toothless in the face of an autocratic and often incompetent regulator.

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The Law Society of England and Wales has, since the early 1990s, fought a rear-guard action against the engagement of solicitors in counter-money laundering efforts. The Regulator, which was first a division of the Law Society and then spun off to become a ludicrously politically charged enforcer of any passing social fad had, at that time the correct view that solicitors were within the scope of the original Money Laundering Regulations. At last, the regulator, now known as the Solicitors (sic) Regulatory Authority (it's so trendy it doesn't use an apostrophe where its name demands one) has decided that money laundering is something it needs to pay attention to. The Law Society is on a war footing, declaring the SRA's action "an assault."

The UK is undergoing a revolution in how legal advice is provided. After decades of de-regulation which has resulted in many areas of law that were covered by solicitors, supposed improvements have allowed many who are not specifically qualified as lawyers to provide advice and assistance. Add in the ever-more restrictive legal aid scheme and it's no surprise that some people turn to non-lawyers for help. Enter the dangerous world of the "professional McKenzie Friend."

A Court has ruled that law firm was not culpable for making payments, from its clients' account, for the benefit of clients who were subject to a freezing order.

The news that judges, in London, have been charged with fraud is just part of a much larger problem. Alongside them are solicitors. The Metropolitan Police have been investigating what they describe as a "complex fraud team investigation." The case started after a court clerk reported suspicions of suspicious claims for state-funded payments under the Legal Aid Scheme. However, legal aid fraud has been a long-running problem in the legal system in England and Wales with criminal and immigration practitioners being most commonly reported.

For the second time recently, a matter before the Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal in England and Wales has considered the use of a firm's clients' account for the provision of quasi-banking services. The SDT is starting to impose more substantial penalties and has clearly had enough of solicitors who fail to comply with their obligations under counter-money laundering laws and regulations. Like in the first case, the solicitor concerned is elderly and one might say that he might be considered as having carried on long-standing practices in the face of changing practice requirements and culture.

A report in The Law Society's Gazette about a male Judge's comments to a women's group meeting has raised the hackles of working men in the solicitor's branch in England and Wales. So who is to blame? The judge for making the comments that can be rightly regarded as sexist or the Law Society which after decades of being "right on" or whatever the current phrase may have finally gone too far in its apparent approval of the Judge's comments? Or perhaps both.,

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The Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal (which, trendily, omits the apostrophe when it writes its own name) has levied its largest fine ever. Like the previous largest, it's against the London office of a US law firm.

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Simon Spence wants to be the next Vice Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association of England and Wales. Not only does he stand on a platform of disparaging solicitors, he does it in such a way that he felt the need to clarify his comments. Surely an accomplished advocate should be expected to be clear the first time, to say what he means and to mean what he says? Then the next question is how can someone who fails those basic tests, with a failure he himself demonstrates by his attempts at correction, can be trusted in a position of high-office within a major professional body?

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In the past 25 years or so, the level of professionalism in the solicitors branch has fallen dramatically as thieves, vagabonds, chancers and businessmen, "right-on" campaigners and the barely literate have taken over the once proud profession. But there have, generally, been beacons that remind us what the Profession shoulda, coulda, woulda become if the correct decisions had been made by government and the self-regulatory bodies that control it. One of those has always been Clyde & Co. How, then, has this (in City terms) small, highly professional outfit, ended up before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and the firm, and three partners, being fined? And what lessons are there for other law firms? (updated)

It used to be that the solicitors branch of the legal profession in England and Wales was compelled to purchase its professional indemnity insurance (PII) from a single, approved, insurer and the cost was very high. Rightly, the profession voted to widen the scheme to permit approved PII to be purchased from third party insurers on a competitive level. But things have not gone according to plan and the latest crisis threatens the future of several firms.

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There are those who misguidedly think that the world would be better off without lawyers. The UK legal profession's problem is that it has for so long abandoned its long-standing principles that it's become utterly rotten from within. Add in the deliberate destruction of the profession by successive governments and it's no surprise that there is a crisis from which few will emerge unscathed.

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There are those who misguidedly think that the world would be better off without lawyers. The UK legal profession's problem is that it has for so long abandoned its long-standing principles that it's become utterly rotten from within. Add in the deliberate destruction of the profession by successive governments and it's no surprise that there is a crisis from which few will emerge unscathed.

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It's all becoming a little too Orwellian. When the previous, Labour government created the "Ministry of Justice" it sounded more 1984 than we were comfortable with. After all, the whole point of the various ministries in the book is to deliver the opposite of what their name promised. Recent changes to costs are removing access to justice except for those that can pay.

And it's all building up to look like a raid on solicitors' firms.

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