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The Jackson reforms, legal aid changes and stagnant corporate work drove a record year in law firm mergers during 2012, according to new research. Strategic mergers could help convince creditors that solicitors remain a good credit risk, it also suggested.

The managing partner of private equity-backed Knights Solicitors has reinforced his short-term plans after investor James Caan revealed ambitions to gatecrash the UK’s top 20 law firms. Mr Cann outlined long-term acquisition goals to send the £10m turnover Staffordshire firm soaring.

The venture capitalists already invested in the UK’s first alternative business structure have added one of the country’s largest probate and estate administration providers to their portfolio, Legal Futures can reveal.

The Ministry of Justice’s legal regulation review has been given greater impetus by publication of a new industrial strategy that aims to strengthen the UK’s position as a global leader in professional and business services (PBS).

The Solicitors Regulatory Authority should be able to process would-be alternative business structures wanting to bid for the new criminal legal aid ‘super-contracts’ in as little as three months, it has told MPs. The Bar Standards Board was more cautious about its regulation, however.

There may be circumstances in which the eight-day period solicitors have to challenge interventions into their practices should be extended, the Court of Appeal has suggested.

If you are a partner doing legal aid work, working long hours and from a black, Asian or minority ethnic background, then you are probably the most stressed solicitor in the country. That is according to newly published Law Society research.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s reluctance to give detailed guidance to law firms on cloud computing could be because it is “waiting for something to go wrong” before it acts, a report has suggested.

The High Court has this week been hearing the first claim for judicial review arising from last year’s high-profile problems with the Bar Standards Board’s tribunals which, if successful, would throw the barristers’ disciplinary regime into disarray.

Famous logistics company Stobart Group now has a law firm to sit alongside its direct access barrister service, Legal Futures can reveal. The Solicitors Regulation Authority has granted an alternative business structure licence to One Legal Ltd, which was set up by the company.