The Law Society has come out against proposals to increase the Solicitors Regulation Authority's fining power from the current £2,000 to £25,000.
The representative body said the change would significantly increase the scope of cases dealt with in-house by the SRA and cause alarm among members about the regulator’s all-pervasive role in the disciplinary process.
The Society’s response to the SRA consultation pointed out that while larger firms would be in a strong position to negotiate, smaller firms would know they could not contest cases in a costly Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and so would be under ‘unacceptable’ levels of pressure to accept a ‘deal’.
I.Stephanie Boyce, Law Society president, said it was accepted that a moderate increase in fining powers would speed up the process and save costs and reduce stress through fewer cases going to the tribunal. A threshold of between £5,000 and £7,500 was suggested, based on analysis of fines imposed over the past three years.
‘Increasing fining powers by more than 12 times the current limit isn’t appropriate,’ said Boyce. ‘The proposed substantial increase to the threshold would potentially include many more serious or significant cases which currently go before the SDT and where full reasons for its decisions are transparently set out in written judgements and published on the SDT website.
‘Our members have concerns about the SRA acting as investigator, prosecutor and judge without independent scrutiny.’
In a wide-ranging consultation, the regulator also proposes to introduce a fixed-penalty system for certain offences and to mandate that fines are no longer suitable for cases involving sexual misconduct.
On the fixed penalty regime, Boyce said there were concerns about the set-up and administrative costs when it was not clear what the benefits would be.
The Society stressed in its response that discrimination, sexual misconduct and harassment within the profession should be treated with the ‘utmost seriousness’, but there was opposition to the idea of rigid rules mandating certain punishments.
The response said: 'By suggesting that all sexual misconduct, discrimination and non-sexual harassment cases should only be dealt with by suspension or striking off, thereby excluding the availability of a financial penalty, the SRA is effectively tying the hands of the tribunal from the outset. If suspension or striking off are the only sanctions available, there are likely to be cases, just under the threshold, which would result in no sanction being imposed at all. However, if the fining power is still available then this sanction could still be imposed in such cases.’
