SRA courts BME solicitors and sole practitioners

Why do BME solicitors work at small firms? Is it because they are not accepted by magic circle firms. It is a closed shop. You will notice when you attend these magic circle firms how many are whites and how many are BMEs.

There is clearly racism in the legal profession from employing to the regulator.

This is nothing more than political correctness from a silly regulator. There are plenty of non-white people working in the Magic Circle and other elite firms, and proportionately non-white people are well-represented across the rest of the profession.

The SRA says it is trying to combat racism, but this latest workshop is inherently racist.

Why is the SRA exclusively targeting BME solicitors with a workshop on "how to avoid making common mistakes"? Does the regulator really think that all BME solicitors are inherently stupid just because of their race?

The SRA has taken a fundamentally racist approach and should know how to avoid making such a common mistake.

we ALL made one common mistake. we bothered to qualify.

This is really ridiculous in 21st century Britain. I am sorry for any BME solicitor who bothers to attend this workshop. What other evidence do we need to confirm that SRA is riddled with recism. Why on earth do they think that BME solicitors and small firms need specialist workshop? Nonesense!

Hilarious reaction to the article.

Now folks complaining that inviting BME solicitors to a workshop is racist. The SRA just cannot win.

I am not from a legal background but can I ask why the Society for Black Lawyers exists. I only ask because I am not aware of many professions where there are similar groups set up based on racial background.

Also, can I ask whether white lawyers are permitted to join or should they set up their own society for white lawyers? Or would that be racist too?

SRA are racist. They are loosing their balance. They know their days are limited because they have people like Mr Peter Herbert from the SBL who are after them for JUSTICE.

SRA thank you for suggesting these courses as you have clearly shown now that you are racist.

May be SRA needs to take some courses and educate themselves.

From my memory you are a stock broker. So why are you always commenting on the area you are not familiar with. If you do not know what BME solicitors have to face with this racist regulator please do not comment.

Can not remember if you are WHITE. You must be naive to making a comment like that.

For your information Mr Peter Herbert is a barrister and a judge and a very respected member of the society. You are jealous because SBL are supporting BME for justice.

You are insulting BME solicitors by making those comments. Of course did you not know that white solicitors already have their closed shop doing special favours for each other. In fact throughout the legal profession.

Yes may be you can go and form a society of XXXX stock brokers.

More politically correct gibberish. Massive chips on BME shoulders methinks. Can we get over the preoccupation with diversity/institutional racism, yawn yawn yawn - it really is becoming very boring indeed.
If you do not wish to be investigated, whether BME lawyer or big bad white man lawyer, do not commit mortgage fraud, personal injury fraud, immigration fraud etc, do not breach the rules, act with integrity. Simple really.

So you are jealous that Peter Herbert is supporting BME solicitors and has the guts to stand up to the SRA (Mafia).

As I suggested Kelly go and create a problem amongst the Brokers. You do not belong here.

Sorry I think your mind is totally twisted. This is not Olympics we are discussing here. You have your wires crossed.

Who ever gets bored by the race discrimination are definitely white because they know they are guilty.

If SRA were not racist they would not have instructed Pearn Kandola to prepare a report and were critised for being racist.

It is just a matter of time when the whole issue of racism will be revealed and SRA will be abolished. Then it will be hilarious.

But this article has nothing to do with vexatious litigation.

As a white solicitor, am I allowed to attend the BME events? Organising events for particular ethnic groups of solicitors does strike me as somewhat misjudged - it makes it easy for people to say that (i) the fact that such events are being organised is in itself evidence of racism or (ii) it's not fair on non-BME solicitors, who might like such an event organised for them. In short, a case not so much of "engaging with stakeholders" as pissing off all "stakeholders" (god knows where that awful piece of jargon has come from), irrespective of their ethnicity. Still, if you piss everyone one off (as the SRA seems adept at doing at the moment), I suppose that's not racist.

Agreed. It is not the subject of the article.

But the example above does seem to sum up the current mindset of the SBL and its followers who have posted their reaction in response to the article and why we are here discussing it.

And "tom" does not amount to an anonymous contribution? Part of the reason that people post anonymously is that there is indeed so much vitriol on here. The volume of vitriol is a sad reflection on the profession and the Law Society and SRA must take some blame for allowing so much bad feeling to build up.

Re. Anal Sheikh v The Law Society [2005] EWHC 1409 (Ch) Anal Sheikh v The Law Society [2006] EWCA CIV 1577 Anal Sheikh V United Kingdom 51144/07 [2010] ECHR 649 (23 April 2010) Proposed application to the Supreme Court to set aside House of Lords’ decision in Anal Sheikh v The Law Society [2007] HL and for a declaration that all interventions undertaken on the back of the Law Society’s Notice of Intervention are void ab initio

I was the first solicitor in forty five years to have successfully challenged a purported intervention by the Law Society into my former firm of Ashley and Co. in 2005.

Since then I have carried out research into the genesis of the Solicitors’ Act 1974 . My research has led me to conclude that Parliament intended and the Act provides that the Law Society can only enter a solicitor’s practice , seize a solicitor’s files and freeze his bank accounts with a court order, and that the majority of the 5000 interventions which have been carried out by the Law Society to date have been carried out in breach of statute , ultra vire,s and unlawfully, in that the Law Society has entered the solicitor’s office, seized the solicitor’s files , and has frozen the solicitor’s practice bank accounts on the back of nothing more than an internally generated document : the Law Society’s Notice of Intervention . It is only a sheet of paper.

For the past forty five years the judiciary at the highest level in the UK also appear to have mistakenly believed either that Law Society have the power to procure that a bank account is frozen with a sheet of paper or they have mistakenly believed that a sheet of paper had the effect of a court order entitling the Law Society to conduct itself in the way that it does.

I propose to ask the Supreme Court to set aside my intervention and every other intervention based on the Notice on the grounds that in almost all challenges which have taken place, the High Court , the Court of Appeal and the former House of Land (not to mention probably almost every bank in the UK which has frozen their customer’s accounts on the back of the Notice ), have been misled as to the law .

The Notice is a fraudulent instrument and or a false instrument contrary to s1 of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 which the Law Society claims is made at a meeting of a Panel of solicitors but which is simply printed off a computer and used by the Law Society and others to commit the theft of clients’ funds, clients’ residual balances , the solicitor’s unbilled costs and the solicitor’s own money.

The UK Government in the case of Anal Sheikh V United Kingdom 51144/07 [2010] ECHR 649 (23 April 2010) agrees with me as to the legal status of the Notice so there is no reason why the Supreme Court should not accede to my applications .

When it does so, provision should be made to pay compensation to the tens of thousands of solicitors and their families whose lives have been destroyed by the Law Society.

I believe that application could be made within 24 hours and provision for compensation made within 7 days.

My arguments are set out in a letter to the Council Members of the Law Society dated 4th July 2012 which I have sent to Mr Jonathan Rayner. Would you care to publish the entire letter?

It is concerning that some people are using this forum to conceal the injustice, discrimination, and witch hunting going on in the Regulation. Because when you are involved it can give you the opportunity to examine what is being said. The regulation have produced discriminatory out comes parallell to none and those affected together with their families and friends can tell and should be invited to voice their tragic experiences. A lot of people commenting have no experience of the SRA, SDT, COURTS, INJUSTICE, loss of home, death, unemployment through regulation. How they find it necessary to comment on other people's suffering in this way is suicidal. Why are people vexatious litigants is because they have suffered grave injustice that they wish to address or is it because they can be silencesd by tthat label It is vital to note that there is no smoke without fire. These debates and publications can not go on if there are no substance to it. Victims will speak out and back it up with evidence. When regulation move away from regulation and become an instrument of fear to the point that road shows are required, reviews are required, none of which are addressing injustice and disproportionality and discrimination. The Gus John review should go back 10 years. No lip service should be paid to distract the World. Stand up against injustice. Those affected know and those that played those evil roles also know. Stop defending what you do not know about for the sake of it.. A lot of injustice are committed in the "public interest". This term has become a shield for injustice. It is a mis used term. What goes around comes around.

I hope a lot of the posts here are by non lawyer trolls and not solicitors. If not, then the impression is that several posters have huge chips on their shoulders and see racism everywhere. There is a legitimate criticism that the SRA are uninterested in wrong doing in large firms, but if there is discrimination then it's against smallish firms in general and is nothing to do with race.

Solicitor 14:14

Fair enough although I recall someone from the SBL responded here a few months ago to a similar debate and did not comment at all on their support for Mr Mireskandari. If they no longer support this litigation or are able to justify why they still do I will be happy to listen.

The objective of the action I mentioned is simply to raise awareness of this type of litigation. There are a range of ways being considered. Basically though to try to encourage potential claimants and lawyers to consider the pitfallls and possible sanctions (civil restraining orders, having to comply with cost orders and SRA enforcement action) before proceeding with trivial and scattergun litigation. Also for the Law Society and SRA to issue more guidance to the profession on treating third parties fairly. It is evident from this site and my continuing debate with others on LSG forums that many in the profession do not understand their responsibilities in this area.

'Which Magazine' were successful in raising publicity about the file sharing cases and we intend to build on that - particularly concerning trivial libel claims which are a particular problem at the moment. The Libel Reform Campaign has been highly succesfully in dealing with the cure and winning cases in court but we think more can be done to stop these claims in the first place and support should only be given to those people who are genuine and have really suffered harm to their reputation.

Turning to alleged discrimination by the SRA - Interested observer makes a good point and a view I have expressed before. I do not believe evidence has been shown of discrimination on the basis of race. But I do believe smaller firms have been targetted more than larger firms for disciplinary action even when making allowances for the fact there are many more smaller firms. As someone else pointed out here, larger firms are more likely to escape sanctions. That may be partly to do with the fact their systems are set up to be compliant with the rules and any breaches are likely to be genuine mistakes rather than deliberate or reckless non compliance. In my view, smaller firm breaches are more likely to be deliberate, reckless or more serious in the context of the size of their business compared to a larger firm.

That said, over the past few years there has been some clear rule breaking by larger law firms which has been brought to the attention of the SRA. They now need to pull their finger out and deal with these offenders before the public lose even more faith in the profession. My bet is the reason they do not act against larger firms is because they think it will undermine confidence in the profession if the larger players are exposed. However, that attitude has in my opinion had the opposite effect. The SBL has apparently interpreted the failure to act against larger firms as racism which is causing the SRA to go on the defensive. Members of the public are also concerned about the failure to reign in the offenders and are now taking action through generating publicity to protect themselves.

Many members of the public have been broadly supportive of the SRA so far. However now is the time to step up to the plate and clear out all of the rotten apples, make the rules clearer for everyone and then we can move on.

I think my comments about regulatory action in large and small firms are balanced and common sense. I do have some experience of regulation in other professions and have learned alot about how it works here. But happy to listen to any contributors who think my thoughts on this is wrong. I am not always right but I am no racist.

I also qualified my post saying that I still believe large firms escape sanctions. You may be right that it is because larger firms have the resources and expertise to fight the SRA. But my point that this is also because they are reluctant to expose the larger players because it would seriously undermine the profession is valid I think. In my experience one of the responsibilities of a regulator is to improve confidence in their industry and occasionally that may mean sweeping some dirt under the carpet.

Concerning the Magic Law firms (five firms I think) I do not think the SRA have taken action against them because they are excellent firms which no doubt will have systems and compliance departments to ensure there are no breaches. I am sure they make mistakes and there are isolated instances of non compliance but that does not justify wholesale intervention. These firms would not have got where they are by rule breaking.

Intervention is justified however in cases of serious breaches and closing down firms which are rotten to the core. In my view there are several firms within the top 200 which have committed serious breaches which to date have gone unpunished.
The challenge for the SRA is act upon this and restore confidence in the profession.

Very noble of you to offer your services domcoop. What percentage will your fee be this time.... 20% perhaps? However, I doubt you will be that busy - given your definition of vexatious litigation. Best leave it to the judges and the Attorney General for now - and of course the media to nudge them along when they are too slow. It worked with the Libel Reform Campaign whose efforts changed the attitude of the judiciary to the point where most libel claims are now booted out of court.

By the way - the link with the article for those not following the conversation concerns remarks that the Society for Black Lawyers have gone on record supporting Mr Mireskandari who is viewed by some as displaying symptoms of vexatious behaviour. Also it is argued that the SBL complaints (and comments made by apparent supporters here) about the SRA and the Daily Mail are vexatious in nature. So in a way, the comments are relevant to the article and the remarks made by earlier contributors calling the SRA and the newspaper racist.

I am not a lawyer. not black nor white, not eveb asian, I am from the most discrminated against ethnic minority, I let you guess.
I was totally systematically destroyed by raciam. the judges were sick racist. it is what i call the elite' racism. the higher are the people the more racist they are. disgrace disgrace, digrace. subhuman

Lets see what Prof Gus has to report back, I hope he will speak the truth and not be swayed by the SRA just because they will be paying him.

In fairness to Kelly, I think what he/she is saying is that (a) the SBL is not doing itself or its cause any favour by declaring its support for Mireskandari and (b) the allegations made by Mireskandari may or may not be correct but, if he is going to make allegations of that seriousness, he has to get on with his litigation and back them up. No doubt Kelly will clarify...