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The government needs to provide further clarity and guidance on how the ban on referral fees will operate in practice, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned. Issues such as the definition of a referral fee need to be resolved.

Our latest news round-up takes in an innovative partnership to combine financial, taxation and legal advice, an update on ABS applications, the role for ABSs in the conveyancing market, growing fraud claims against solicitors, support for provisional assessment, and new blood at the OLC.

Barristers are showing only “cautious interest” in alternative business structures, although they are keener on barrister-only entities, according to a major survey released yesterday. It also found a “worrying lack of optimisim” in the profession.

The government has pushed back implementation of the Jackson reforms and the referral fee ban to April 2013, it announced yesterday. However, it knocked back all amendments to key elements of the reforms during a House of Lords debate.

Russell Jones & Walker aims to use its new access to capital to become one of the two or three players that will “dominate” the consumer legal market in the years to come, its chief executive has said.

The Institute of Legal Executives was formally presented with its Royal Charter yesterday, transforming Fellows of the Institute into Chartered Legal Executives. The charter protects the title of ILEX members for the first time.

The world’s first listed legal practice, Australia’s Slater & Gordon, is to enter the UK market after agreeing to buy national law firm Russell Jones & Walker for £53.8 million. All of RJW’s principals will continue to work in the new business and are becoming shareholders in S&G.

Solicitors who have a long-standing relationship with a client and receive many instructions are not under an implied general retainer to keep under review all previous advice and drafting, the High Court has ruled.

Our regular news round-up reports on a jailed solicitor’s appeal against his seven-year sentence, an SRA update on PC renewal, Integreon’s new LPO facility, the new Law Society advocacy section, pressure on HSBC over conveyancing and Herbert Smith expanding in Belfast.

The conveyancing market is consolidating fast, with the big getting bigger and the small getting out, figures from the Land Registry have indicated. Some 1,300 fewer legal practices made applications to the registry for transfers in 2011 than in the previous 12 months.