Dear Sole Practitioner Group Members,
I am not sure how many of you have been following the saga of the proposal to close the Solicitors Indemnity Fund which gave protection following the compulsory six year run-off insurance, to those who have retired without being able to pass their liabilities to another organisation.
This closure would have impacted mainly on sole practitioners. The Group have been working on this issue for the last two years or so and obtained an initial one-year delay in closure to September 2021. However no great progress has been made by the Law Society and others in finding an alternative protection for retired solicitors in the intervening period and the insurance industry are not interested in providing cover.
The Group decided to expend some of its funds on taking an opinion from a Leading Counsel as to whether in light of all the current circumstances the SRA and the Legal Services Board would be acting unreasonably in the closure and the initial view was that they would be.
Accordingly a letter was drafted from the Group to the SRA and LSB indicating that judicial review was one possibility and inviting them to reconsider the decision to close in September 2021. A full note has been drafted for the next edition of Solo which should be out in the next few weeks but as Solo is going to press we have the news that the SRA have informed the Law Society that they are deferring closure in September 2021 to allow time for a further effort to be made to produce a result which will avoid retired practitioners being at risk of being uninsured after their first compulsory six years of run-off.
I'm making the point on behalf of the SPG that as the insurance industry have shown no interest to date – and that to a certain extent has caused the delay in finding a solution – a solution should be found using the existing fund without the present involvement of the insurance industry who can if necessary produce appropriate products if there is a change in the market.
This process needs to be started immediately given that a year to achieve this is a very short time and the Group will be pressing all those involved in the Law Society, the SRA and the LSB to ensure that a suitable answer is found.
Clive Sutton - SSPG