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Re the comment of 14.19, based on previous cases involving trust which have also seemed to be unfair decisions for Solicitors, I doubt if Dreamvar could argue it had been badly advised to pursue the case. The biggest problem as I see it is, and will remain, ID. We act for people we mostly don't know. They could be anyone posing as anyone else. Lots of suppliers of goods and services face this problem but with property conveyancing, it's the amounts of money involved that will continue to attract criminals.

I have suggested to the Law Society (a) a mutual fund for firms who are not negligent but are found liable and (b) that we receive proper assistance in the first place to identify people properly, e.g. from the Land Registry who were able to discover that the impostor in Dreamvar was just that. The LS haven't supplied a detailed reply and neither had the LR on the second suggestion. Or how about the police helping out? Indeed any public body which has the actual means to ID people properly. We, solicitors, don't.