A tale of the COFA who trusted the numbers too much
Alison didn’t go looking for trouble. Trouble came looking for her. When she agreed to become her firm’s COFA, it felt like the sensible, grown-up thing to do. She was a salaried partner at [...]
12 things we learned from the SRA Compliance Officer thematic review
The SRA’s recent thematic review of compliance officers is one of those documents that looks modest on the page but has significant importance in practice. If your firm has ever treated COLP/COFA [...]
Mistakes rarely end a career, but the cover-up will
The cover-up is the killer. That sounds obvious until you look at how these cases actually unfold. A deadline is overlooked. A hearing is missed. A letter isn’t sent. A difficult file quietly [...]
Conflicts of interest: the uncomfortable bit we all try to deal with quickly
Here at JBL HQ we had an internal discussion this week about conflicts of interest in law firms. How they are deceptively simple in principle, endlessly awkward in practice, and tend to surface [...]
Familiarity breeds complacency: what Peter Mandelson tells you about your law firm’s AML controls
By Sophie Cisler There’s a reason political scandals are so compelling. They tend to expose very human failings: assumption, trust and over-familiarity. And while most of us aren’t appointing [...]
No win, no fee: what’s the SRA really worried about?
The SRA has published a Warning Notice on “‘no win, no fee’ and other fee arrangements in high-volume consumer claims“. It is aimed squarely at firms (and individuals) doing high-volume [...]
