All Regulation and compliance articles – Page 159
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News
Next year's PC fees agreed today – full details
Individual solicitors will be shielded from significant fee increases next year but most firms will pay more. The Law Society today agreed that its net funding requirement for 2014 will be £116.8m, an increase from £103.5m the previous year. The funds cover the Society, Solicitors Regulation Authority and external bodies ...
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News
SRA set to agree major increase in fining powers
Proposals for significant increases in the fining powers of the Solicitors Regulation Authority are set to be agreed this week. The SRA regulatory risk committee will meet tomorrow to recommend new fining guidelines of between £500 and £50,000 for most firms and individuals. For firms with domestic turnover of more ...
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Opinion
Speedier ABS processing
In response to Adam Entwistle's letter which was critical of the time taken by the SRA to process an ABS licensing application, I would like to reassure potential applicants that this has speeded up significantly since we introduced changes earlier this year. We listened to the profession, and took into ...
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News
Direct Line applies to set up law firm through ABS
Britain’s biggest car insurer, Direct Line Group, has applied to the Solicitors Regulation Authority to become an alternative business structure. The insurer wants to create a newly formed and wholly owned law firm, DLG Legal Services, to operate in partnership with existing law firm Parabis. Direct Line Group already provides ...
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News
Convey Law becomes ABS
Convey Law, which claims to be one of the country’s top 10 residential conveyancing companies, has been granted ABS status by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers. The firm’s sales and marketing director Rob Hosier told the Gazette that the firm applied to change its status because it is owned by ...
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News
Stobart director gains licence for solicitor ABS as ‘final piece in the jigsaw’
Trevor Howarth, legal director of Stobart Barristers, has been granted an alternative business structure licence by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for a company he set up with an employment barrister, he confirmed today. The SRA has licensed One Legal, a company set up by Howarth and employment barrister Tim Edge ...
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News
SRA’s 2013 diversity data collection system goes live
Firms can now report their workforce diversity data, including sexual orientation, ethnicity, age and gender, through a new online facility on mySRA, the Solicitors Regulation Authority announced today. Collection of this data is a Legal Services Board requirement to promote transparency and diversity in the legal services market, the SRA ...
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Opinion
Time for a ‘sub-profession’ in the law?
The article about interventions in last week’s Gazette, which included a description of the consequences and cost of the collapse of Blakemores, should have us all worried for the future of our profession. It is clear now that our leaders were mistaken when they allowed first advertising and later referral ...
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FeatureCase fee decisions
We all like to complain. There is probably somebody sat nearby in your office complaining about something right now.
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News
Accountants challenged by Society over ‘flawed’ application
The Law Society has condemned the ‘seriously flawed’ application by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England & Wales (ICAEW) to become an approved licensing body for the grant of probate, it emerged last week. In a letter to Legal Services Board (LSB) chief executive Chris Kenny, the Society accuses ...
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Opinion
SRA rules are inconsistent
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is taking an average of seven months to license an alternative business structure, and 20% of applications have taken longer than nine months to process. Schedule 11 of the Legal Services Act prescribes that the decision period must be six months from the date an application ...
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Feature
How agents work when the SRA intervenes into a failing firm
When the Solicitors Regulation Authority intervenes in a failing practice, it is a fast-moving process – and one that is often misunderstood by clients, creditors and practitioners alike. Within hours of the decision being made, the firm’s practice accounts will be frozen and within days its files, computers and accounting ...
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News
In-house concern over compliance message
Most legal and compliance departments in Fortune-1000 companies report that systems designed to boost ethical and compliant behaviour in the rest of the business are not being properly communicated. In 63% of companies, internal performance standards in these areas are ‘neither clear nor adequately expressed’. That is the conclusion of ...
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News
Culture change needed at BSB, says super-regulator
The Bar Standards Board will encounter ‘significant challenges’ in emulating the Solicitors Regulation Authority
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News
SRA right to raid compensation fund - for now at least
It all goes very quiet at the SRA board meetings when the subject of interventions comes up. Director Richard Collins updated the situation yesterday with the solemnity of a radio announcer reading out the names of kittens who have died that day.
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News
SRA wants compensation fund to cover intervention bill
The SRA has decided not to impose a one-off levy on solicitors to pay for the rising cost of intervening in failed firms, but wants the multimillion-pound bill to fall on the rapidly diminishing compensation fund instead.
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News
Society warns against muddling funding for interventions
The Law Society has called for ‘proper transparency’ if regulators are to pay intervention costs out of compensation fund reserves. The Solicitors Regulation Authority confirmed on Wednesday it wants to cover an estimated £7m overspend on interventions this year by using money held in the compensation fund. The SRA says ...
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News
SRA commits millions to interventions
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has already used 10% of its entire annual budget intervening in failed firms in 2013, the organisation revealed today.
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News
SRA joins attack on ‘poorly informed’ Legal Services Board
The Legal Services Board stands accused of partiality and incompetence in the latest attack from a regulator.