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The House of Lords yesterday inflicted two defeats on the government over part 2 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, but the main elements of the Jackson reforms remained intact. Third-party litigation funding and referral fees were also under the spotlight.

The form that allows law firms to nominate their compliance officers for legal practice and for finance and administration should go live in the next six weeks, the Solicitors Regulation Authority said yesterday, while also revealing some of the information it will require about them.

The Court of Appeal yesterday quashed the conviction of a solicitor jailed for fraud and money laundering in £650,000 worth of property transactions. However, a conviction for perverting the course of justice – for selling a Lamborghini that was subject to a freezing order – was unaffected.

Regulators should empower consumers to drive improvements in the quality of legal services, while professional indemnity insurers could hand over firm-specific claims data to help target poorly performing practices, the Legal Services Board has suggested.

The government has recognised the ever-growing importance of e-disclosure and launched a £7m tender to appoint up to five e-disclosure providers to service the whole of the UK public sector.

More common training of would-be lawyers, sector-wide CPD, and scrapping the training contract and pupillage, are among the “more radical” options being considered by the Legal Education and Training Review, according to its first discussion paper, issued yesterday.

Our latest round-up of news includes Fisher Meredith winning an appeal against a big wasted costs order, SRA figures on the number of firms and solicitors, the first law firm to ‘pin’ on growing social media service Pinterest, fee income up at the largest law firms, and more.

A government bid to give the key element of the Jackson reforms retrospective effect was today branded “patently unfair” by costs experts and likely to encourage defendants to start stringing out cases.

Making the ban on paying referral fees for personal injury work a criminal offence is among a range of changes to part 2 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill that will be put to the House of Lords this week, after peers inflicted six defeats on the government over its legal aid reforms.

A City law firm is to license out to other practices a matter risk management system that has helped eliminate claims against the firm in recent times and saved around £600,000 a year in professional indemnity insurance premiums.