SRA returns £9m to clients of closed firm PM Law

Former clients of firms in the PM Law Group have already been paid £9m as regulators grapple with thousands of unresolved cases.

One month since the Solicitors Regulation Authority intervened to take charge of the affairs of PM Law, the regulator said today it has received more than 250 applications to the compensation fund and paid out on 38 of the most urgent. These mostly relate to property transactions that were potentially going to collapse without money being returned.

Of the £9m, around £5.6m was paid out of client money held by PM Law at the time of the intervention, with a further £3.69m paid from the compensation fund, which is resourced through contributions from law firms and solicitors.

The Sheffield-headquartered group was shut down two days after it put closed signs up overnight in offices dotted across Yorkshire, Cumbria, Derbyshire and Berkshire. The whole business consisted of 11 companies and more than 30 trading names.

The matter is being investigated as a potential fraud involving the misappropriation of client funds.

The intervention has the potential to be one of the most complicated and expensive ever undertaken by the SRA: more than 17,000 clients have been emailed with information on what steps they need to take and how they can request their files. Clients had a wide range of residential conveyancing, personal injury, employment, matrimonial, private client and civil litigation matters. The regulator and its intervention agent Gordons LLP have taken possession of tens of thousands of physical and digital files, which include thousands of boxes of documents from all 25 different offices.

More than 3,600 files have been released so far, but the SRA continues to encourage clients of PM Law who have an open legal matter to instruct a new solicitor and not wait for access to their files.

On compensation for clients, the SRA said: ‘This is a complex process, and we are working through applications as quickly as possible. We need to make sure that we deal with all applications fairly and the right people get the right amount of money returned. It will take some time to resolve these matters, so we continue to request understanding and patience whilst we do this.’

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