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First he allowed solicitors to join, now the founder of RateMyBarrister is relaunching the website as legalbods.com, because “people who need legal advice often ask if anyone knows any good ‘legal bods'”. William Rees said his focus was on obtaining more detailed data from clients.

Legal regulators have called on the government to make a series of changes to the Legal Services Act that will make it easier to approve and regulate alternative business structures. The move is part of the first output from joint work being done by all of the legal regulators to identify opportunities for deregulation.

Barristers’ complaints about the quality of solicitor-advocates in family law cases are really about concerns over falling workloads, solicitors have said. Law Society president Jonathan Smithers accused the family Bar of “denigrating solicitor colleagues under the guise of a concern for quality”.

Legal Services Board chief executive Richard Moriarty is to leave the post next February after just a year in the role, it was announced today. Mr Moriarty is returning to the Civil Aviation Authority as its deputy chief executive and group director for consumers and markets.

Banks may charge law firms more for borrowing if they abandon their client accounts, the legal regulators have warned. A report submitted to justice minister Shailesh Vara highlighted both the dangers and benefits of allowing choice on whether to handle client money directly.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has reprimanded a solicitor for calling his opponent in litigation, among other things, a “complete plonker” – conduct which it said would diminish the trust of the public in the profession

Barristers have called on the Ministry of Justice to conduct a review of advocacy in publicly funded family cases, arguing that solicitors are letting down their clients and causing injustice by handling cases without counsel.

The need to extend access to justice to those who cannot afford legal services is “already resulting in less involvement by lawyers in many of the tasks that previously made up their staple diet”, the chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said. Elisabeth Davies also suggested that the emergence of professional McKenzie Friends “may repeat itself in other sections of the market”.

National Accident Helpline (NAH) and seven personal injury law firms, including Irwin Mitchell, are launching an Ethical Marketing Charter today. NAH will administer the scheme and handle complaints about possible breaches.

Two firms applying to the Solicitors Regulation Authority to become alternative business structures asked to keep their client money with the Bar Council’s third-party escrow account, BARCO, it has emerged.