The Solicitors Regulation Authority has intervened into seven different firms in the same day after their law network owner went into administration.

The Gazette understands that administrators from Begbies Traynor have found buyers for some or all of the intervened entities after talks throughout last week.

Birmingham-based Law Direct Limited went into administration on 20 June and two days later the SRA intervened to shut the practice down.

The seven to follow are: Geoffrey Bryant & Co Limited in Windsor, Redfern & Co in Birmingham, Ellison & Co in Cardiff, Brinley Morris Rees & Jones in Llanelli, Davies Phillips LLP, in Swansea, Strain Keville LLP in central London and Daker Solicitors in Brighton.

Law Direct Limited was previously known as Blackstone Law Solicitors & Advocates Ltd until changing its name in June 2022.

Its principal director is Zaheer Afzal, appointed in December 2021, who states his occupation as barrister on Companies House filings. 

The only other active director is solicitor John Burrowes, who is also a director of Sussex Law Limited, which is not subject to any intervention and continues to trade as normal.

Law Direct Ltd itself is relatively unknown: the most recent annual accounts, covering the year ended 31 December 2021, state that the business at the time had two employees and net assets of around £27,500.

Earlier this year, the SRA put out an alert warning that another website was misusing the name and postal address of Law Direct Limited. This rogue website stated that the firm was set up by Antony Marrow but the genuine firm confirmed it had no connection to the site and did not employ anyone by that name.

All the intervened practices appear to have been bought in the past two years by Law Direct. The entities are subject to intervention, but the trading names can continue – and each practice effectively continues – if administrators complete a sale and transfer work to another firm.

Redfern & Co was founded in 1881 and is located on New Street in the centre of Birmingham, offering a range of service in the private and commercial sector.

Brinley was established in 1940, while Strain Keville is more than 40 years old.

The closure of the head of a law firm network appears similar to the collapse of the Metamorph Group, where the SRA had to intervene to shut down several entities bought in the previous three years. It is understood, however, the Law Direct process has been more orderly, with the firm in regular contact with the SRA and ensuring a transition to new owners through the administrators. The regulator’s involvement is largely related to handling archive files rather than dealing with active files, as it had to do for  Metamorph.

 

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