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The council of the Law Society of Scotland has today ditched its support for all forms of alternative business structures and instead backed a compromise that favours majority ownership of law firms remaining with solicitors, or solicitors with other regulated professionals.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority today recognised that it has “much to do” to build the confidence of law firms in their regulator if it is to succeed in delivering outcomes-focused regulation (OFR). The launch today of its consultation on how OFR will work also came with words of caution from the Law Society about the implementation timetable, cost and regulatory burden that may result.

Plans for a contract that will allow barristers to sue solicitors for unpaid fees, and a blacklist of solicitors who fail to pay up on all cases, rather than just privately funded ones, have been unveiled by the Bar Council.

The Institute of Legal Executives has called on the incoming government to protect the title of ‘legal executive’ as a matter of consumer protection as currently anyone can call themselves a legal executive regardless of whether they have any legal qualification.

One of Lord Justice Jackson’s own assessors – the Senior Costs Judge, Peter Hurst – has cast doubt on the judge’s recommendation that referral fees be abolished, it has emerged. The news comes ahead of two influential reports examining referral fees that are to be published next month.

This week’s Question of Ethics from the Solicitors Regulation Authority asks whether you should take action if you are told that a colleague is drinking heavily and abusing his partner – and whether conduct outside the office is ever a matter for the regulator.

Barristers were yesterday given the tools to bolt a corporate vehicle onto their chambers which can bid for work, instruct solicitors and also bring clerks and others into ownership roles. The Bar Council’s new business model, dubbed ProcureCo, raises the possibility of barristers competing with solicitors for work.

No claimant personal injury (PI) law firm will exist in five years’ time if it does not have 20-30 fee-earners, a leading PI practitioner predicted last week. Richard Langton, managing partner in the Birmingham office of Russell Jones & Walker, said this would enable firms to open from at least eight in the morning to eight in the evening, and perhaps on Saturdays too.

High street solicitors may soon become a thing of the past if steps are not taken to curb and regulate the predatory marketing of national organisations keen to move into the legal sector next year, the Lawyers Defence Group has warned. It spoke out in the wake of an announcement by the Co-operative Group that it intends to launch a nine-week campaign promoting its legal services to shoppers in its nationwide chain of 3,000 supermarkets.

Top law firms are outsourcing as much to elsewhere within the UK as they are to India and South Africa, new research has found. Litigation support was the most popular service, followed by knowledge management, legal process and secretarial/typing work.