Society's News

Notification of Bristol Law Society AGM

The Annual General Meeting of Bristol Law Society will take place virtually on Tuesday 17 November.  Attendees will be able to join from 5.45pm and the meeting will start promptly at 6pm.  If you wish to attend, please email events@bristollawsociety.com and the joining details will be forwarded to you a few days before the meeting. Please see below all the … more

Corporate Members 2020

3PB Albion Chambers Ashfords Barcan + Kirby Burges Salmon Clarke Willmott Cooke Painter Ltd Clyde & Co DAC Beachcroft Devereux & Co Enterprise Chambers The Family Law Practice Foot Anstey (including Enable Law) Fussell Wright Gregg Latchams Ltd Guildhall Chambers Irwin Mitchell Solicitors Kelcey & Hall Lyons Davidson Marc White & Co Meade King Michelmores LLP MS Rubric Osborne Clarke … more

No 12, The Meeting Rooms – Conference, Meeting and Mediation Rooms for Hire

Please note that the BLS office is shut to members at present as we continue to work from home during the pandemic. We can be contacted on info@bristollawsociety.com. In the meantime, our office is now operating as the Bristol Nightingale Court and accordingly, we are unable to hire out our facilities until further notice. (Oct 2020) Bristol Law Society’s suite … more

Costs in the SDT – Lessons for practitioners from the Leigh Day case

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emma Walker is an Associate Solicitor at Leigh Day, working in the firm’s Regulatory & Disciplinary team. For over 3 ½ years, Emma worked as part of the team responding to the SRA’s investigation and prosecution of Leigh Day.
In September 2018, Leigh Day launched its own Regulatory & Disciplinary team, in order to advise and support others with their compliance, regulatory and disciplinary needs. Emma forms part of that team.
Read the team’s insights and updates online, via Twitter, or on LinkedIn.

New Year, new chapter

This year will be the first in quite a few, in which I won’t be acting as part of Leigh Day’s in-house team, advising and supporting colleagues during the SRA’s investigation and prosecution arising out of the Al Sweady Inquiry. So 2019 represents a new chapter for me and Leigh Day’s Regulatory & Disciplinary team; one in which we are looking forward to helping clients with their regulatory and compliance needs.

The start of a new year, as well as being a good moment to look to the future, is also an opportunity to reflect on the journey leading up to that point. So at the start of this new year, I’ve been looking back on some of the judicial decisions in the Leigh Day case, because they represent important lessons for legal practitioners as they too look forward.

In this blog, I’ll be looking at the costs decision made in the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) in December 2017, which is an authority successful respondents can call on, when applying to recover the costs of defending themselves in regulatory prosecutions. In my next article, I’ll be looking at some of the principles that can be drawn from the High Court’s decision on the appeal of some of the substantive allegations.

Costs in the SDT

In the Leigh Day costs decision, the Tribunal unanimously agreed that the SRA is not in the position of a normal party to litigation because of its statutory duty to regulate the profession in the public interest. Thanks to that duty, costs do not “follow the event”, meaning that even where the SRA’s prosecution is unsuccessful, costs are not normally awarded against it. In such cases, the Tribunal will need to look at the SRA’s conduct in bringing the case, to see whether it was “unreasonable” or otherwise justifies a costs order being made against it…….. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE