Recently, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) issued new detailed guidance for how regulated firms must handle different situations related to sexual misconduct. The guidance comes after years of increasing complaints of misconduct within the sector.
The guidance is intended to clarify the SRA’s expectations for what is acceptable workplace behaviour, the way firms handle reports of sexual misconduct, and when regulatory action is needed. It lays out a model for understanding the way the regulator thinks about which types of actions require intervention.
The automation feature allows admins to automate their workflow with logic-based actions. The share action within automations now includes the option to select a specific admin to share a submission with. The admin selected will be notified that a new submission has been shared with them. The notification will include a link to the submission on the admin side of the system instead of the end user side. To create automation, navigate to “Edit form” >> “Automations” >> “Add automation”.
Automation action for sharing with specific admins
Bug fixes
Fixed an issue where the ‘view changes’ link in the timeline was not working for anonymous forms
Fixed an issue where certain scoring fields were not working when only two options existed
Fixed an issue where users were landing on a login page with the message “Submission deleted” even though it wasn’t
Does your organisation know exactly what is happening in its supply chains?
Is your company benefitting from modern slavery?
More than 150 years after slavery was officially abolished, there are more slaves than ever before. It is estimated that as many as 40 million people are estimated to be trapped in modern slavery worldwide. These include workers abused around the world and in your city, forced under threat of punishment to work, or to provide services without being able to leave.
Modern slavery laws have thrust much of the responsibility for fighting these abuses onto the corporate sector, making supply chain transparency an increasingly important topic. Companies are now expected to take a proactive role to ensure that slavery and human trafficking are not taking place within their businesses or any of their suppliers.
VinciWorks’ new brief but comprehensive course will help employees understand the realities of modern-day slavery, the legislation being used to fight it, and what your company can do to help.
In every sphere of life, we must make important decisions balancing different and often conflicting needs and interests. Conflicts of interest arise when an employee’s judgment can be affected due to a clash between personal or financial interests and professional duties.
Conflicts of interest in the legal profession can arise in a number of situations due to the complexities of the field. When two or more clients have conflicting interests, the duty to act in the best interests of each of our clients may mean that the firm’s responsibilities toward one client may conflict with its responsibilities toward another. A firm cannot reasonably represent both sides in a contractual dispute or advise both an investor and their potential investment.
The timeline feature is essential for tracking submissions through their lifecycle. It tells you what changes were made, who made them, and when. As such, we’re happy to deliver a new and improved timeline experience that will be even more reliable and easy to use.
Tracking changes just got a whole lot easier. All changes to a submission will create an update event on the timeline and clicking the “view changes” link will now display an easy-to-read list of the changes made.
When an automation or reminder triggers a submission it will create a new event on the timeline. Those events now display a link back to the specific automation or reminder the event was created for. This means you can easily track down the automations that may not be working as intended.
We’ve made various behind-the-scenes improvements to ensure the reliability of the timeline event creation and order.
Automations using the “webhook” action will create a webhook event on the timeline that includes the webhook status.
Timeline view after clicking on a view changes link
New public API added
We’ve added a new public API for updating the value of a user lookup field. API documentation can be viewed in the ‘Configuration’ page of your Omnitrack system.
Penetration test completed
As part of a periodic security tests routine, VinciWorks regularly performs penetration tests by independent security companies who conduct both a grey-box and black-box review. The goal of these tests is to simulate an external invasion of VinciWorks’ infrastructure and application levels, in order to examine the soundness of the existing security and defence methods and to locate weaknesses in the communication, application, database and operating system levels that are available to potential attackers.
Bug fixes
Fixed an issue where the user’s page was not displaying the correct information under the ‘added via’ column
Fixed an issue where some anonymous forms were redirecting to the login page
Although ESG has been steadily gaining traction in the corporate world and becoming a top priority for many businesses, many law firms are lagging behind.
This may be because ESG has developed outside of a regulatory landscape. But legislation is beginning to catch up and law firms, as key corporate service providers, are being expected to consult and strategize on ESG for their clients. Companies are relying on their lawyers’ skills to implement internal ESG goals.
All UK law firms subject to the Money Laundering Regulations are required to establish an independent audit function to examine, evaluate and make recommendations regarding the adequacy and effectiveness of their practice’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing policies, controls, and procedures. This can be carried out via an internal or an external auditor.
According to the Money Laundering Regulations, an AML audit for law firms does not need to be conducted by an external auditor; however, over 50% of firms do choose this method. When one additionally considers LSAG guidance, conducting an external audit makes a lot of sense. LSAG guidance stresses:
Andy Donovan, Managing Director and Founder of Compliance Office
Unwanted and offensive messages
A former IT service desk analyst at Pinsent Masons has been banned from working in the legal industry for sending “offensive” messages to a colleague. He sent a number of messages to another member of staff using the firm’s communication systems which contained offensive language directed to the recipient. This is an essential reminder that the SRA’s Standards and Regulations apply to all those who work in a law firm, whether legally qualified or not! If you would like your staff to be more aware of this, please get in touch with Compliance Office to learn more about their courses.
Further, a former partner at Capsticks has agreed with the SRA that he will remove himself from the Roll of Solicitors for three years and accepted a rebuke. He sent numerous inappropriate and unwanted messages that could have been interpreted as sexual in nature to a junior colleague (of whom he was line manager) over a period of months. In addition, he made inappropriate comments about her sex life, her becoming pregnant and her taking maternity leave.
The SRA requires UK law firms subject to the Money Laundering Regulations to carry out independent AML audits on a regular basis. In this blog post we’ll explain what an independent AML audit is and why they are important.
What is an independent AML audit?
An independent AML audit is an examination of a firm’s anti-money laundering systems. It is not a financial audit, but rather a test carried out by an impartial body to assess whether a firm’s AML and anti-terrorist financing policies, controls and procedures are up to date, comply with regulations, and are functioning correctly. It can be seen as one of the components of an effective anti-money laundering program.
On 1 September, a series of amendments to the UK Money Laundering Regulations 2017 came into force. These include an obligation for regulated entities to identify, assess and mitigate the risk of proliferation financing (PF). Regulated entities have the flexibility to create a new risk assessment on PF, or to incorporate proliferation financing into their existing money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessments.
The Treasury will conduct a national risk assessment in relation to proliferation financing, and regulated persons will also be required to take appropriate steps to identify and assess the risks to which their business is subject.
VinciWorks have published a new guide covering the basics of proliferation financing, how PF occurs, key PF risks in the UK, red flags and more.
