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Lawyers must provide clearer pricing information to their clients or risk losing out to new entrants to the market, the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) has warned. LeO today issued a report on the problems issues around cost causes consumers, accounting for up to a quarter of all of its investigations.

The introduction of an aptitude test for prospective Bar students may be premature – and in any case fails to address the “real issue” of the mismatch between student numbers and training contracts/pupilages – the Law Society has told the Bar Standards Board.

Barristers and solicitors are at loggerheads over whether plea-only advocates need to undergo judicial evaluation as part of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates. If a resolution cannot be found, then the whole scheme could fall apart.

Providing immigration advice and services may need to become a reserved legal activity, the Legal Services Board has suggested. It found that there is likely to be “significant consumer detriment” in the way this work is being regulated at the moment.

The government has welcomed the first common framework to measure the progress of social mobility within the professions, which was launched last Friday. The social mobility toolkit was published by Professions for Good.

Lawyers2you is to become the first legal network to take on London when it launches its first franchise in the east of the city shortly, Legal Futures can reveal. The news comes after it faced criticism in the press for an A-board it used in central Birmingham.

The board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority this week approved the third edition of the SRA Handbook since it went live last October, with a fourth one due before the end of June. The SRA said it recognised the disruption this would cause but argued that the updates have been unavoidable.

The Legal Education and Training Review needs to be radical and permanently separate authorisation to practise from professional titles, the chairman of the Legal Services Board said this week.

The vast majority of law firms are non-compliant with the Solicitors Code of Conduct, research by the Solicitors Regulation Authority has found. Most of the 200 firms assessed had four or five incidences of non-compliance.

The government yesterday offered a limited concession on the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill as a coalition of 10 leading after-the-event insurers accused the government of ignoring the industry during the formulation of its policy.