Legal bods: Why would a solicitor be shut down by the SRA?

[LankyDoodle]

I've received a letter this morning (and so has my husband - separately) with respect to my will and other ongoings we had with our solicitor, regarding a building dispute.

Blake Lapthorne is the company that's written to us and they are in possession of our will and other papers. They only wrote as they wish to forward these documents to us.

At the start of the letter, they say that the SRA carried out an intervention in the firm of X on 30th March 2009, which is a power given to the Law Society by Parliament to close down firms of solicitors in certain circumstances. What circumstances?

As far as we are concerned he was an excellent solicitor. He dealt with our dispute with our builder very very well, and we have more or less won that. He worked from home and yes, his office did always seem a little chaotic, but he always did what was asked and was extremely reasonably priced.

I don't get it....

 

[Theresa_F]

Money laundering - there are a lot of rules and regs to stop this - maybe he was caught for this. Also any other type of fraud or using money held in client account would do this.

 

[LankyDoodle]

Thanks Theresa.

I just looked on the SRA website and it says that he failed to comply with the Solicitors' Accounts Rules 1998. :S

ETS: So yeh looks like he's either put money belonging to clients in his own account; or he has used one client's money for something not relating to that client's case; or he hasn't kept accurate records.

Poor guy, but very foolish.

 

[LankyDoodle]

Next question: why can't I read?! This is clearly stable yard, not soapbox. Durrrrrrrrr!

 

[LankyDoodle]

Oh I just remembered that we checked our credit report and a company had carried out credit checks for money laundering on us, so maybe they checked all his clients out. Maybe it is linked.

 

[cariadssogreat]

All I can say is Blake Lapthorn are quite good too - as far as solicitors go.