Some law firms need to do more to guard against the risk of wealthy individuals using UK solicitors to silence legitimate criticism, a legal regulator has warned.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority, which oversees lawyers in England and Wales, on Tuesday said a review into 25 unnamed law firms over the use of so-called strategic lawsuits against public participation, or Slapps, had found “good practice” among many solicitors.
But it warned that there were “areas where firms needed to do better”, pointing to a lack of organisational policies and procedures around how to deal with litigation or reputation management matters.
Slapps refers to lawyers acting for powerful clients who pursue “abusive litigation” designed to “harass or intimidate” opponents into silence, according to the SRA, which last year issued a warning notice to law firms.
Its review comes amid mounting concerns that wealthy companies and individuals, including Russian oligarchs, have used the threat of England’s strict libel laws to evade scrutiny and intimidate journalists, authors and others into limiting or abandoning critical articles or books.
Justice secretary Dominic Raab last year vowed to crack down on the practice and promised to introduce new legislation to curb the misuse of the UK legal system when parliamentary time allowed.
In its review, the SRA said many solicitors “demonstrated they had a good understanding of the risks”. It added that no evidence had been found of “the firms we reviewed abusing the litigation process”.
But it cautioned that solicitors specialising in libel and reputation management needed better training because too many had a “poor understanding” of their obligations to report potential misconduct by others.
According to the regulator — which is probing 40 live cases linked to Slapps — 11 heads of department and six fee earners at law firms said they had had to inform a client that they could not pursue litigation because it was abusive or unfair.
SRA chief executive Paul Philip said that although most solicitors took their duties seriously, the review showed “some firms need to do more” and that all needed to be “focused on meeting the high standards we all expect”.
“We will be carrying out a further review of firms in this area, while redoubling our efforts to make sure our message is getting through,” he added.
Andrew Pavlovic, partner at law firm CM Murray, said the SRA’s findings meant it would “be interesting to see how many of the 40 cases of alleged Slapps . . . actually result in disciplinary action”.
He said the regulator’s conclusions suggested that, in general, firms were aware of their regulatory obligations, adding: “Cases where firms are involved in Slapps are likely to be the exception rather than the rule.”
The review comes after the Treasury said last month that it would review its own procedures and look into the system of granting licences to individuals placed under sanctions.
That announcement followed reports that the finance ministry had issued special licences to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, that allowed him to circumvent UK sanctions and use a UK law firm to sue a British journalist for libel.
Prigozhin’s lawyers in London all stopped working for him well before he admitted to running the Wagner group of mercenaries.