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Howard Kennedy has become the latest large London practice to face action from the Solicitors Regulation Authority after four solicitors and the firm itself were referred to a disciplinary tribunal over alleged accounts rules breaches.

The charity LawCare has called on the profession to reconsider its culture in the wake of the case this week of a solicitor who avoided being struck-off for dishonesty offences because of the pressure she was put under at work and her mental ill-health. It said the case of Sovani James depicted “a scenario that we are very familiar with”.

The Law Society is to launch a new ‘quality and standards in education’ committee, after a year in which its training arrangements have come under sustained pressure. It is also investigating whether to reintroduce student membership and has issued guidance on when law firms should tell trainees whether they have a job post admission.

The Ministry of Justice yesterday laid out the extensive work being done to prepare for the increase in the personal injury small claims limit, including how it might work with the planned online court. It shows that, despite the continuing silence over when the Civil Liability Bill will be published, considerable work is going on behind the scenes.

A solicitor who deliberately kept money from clients for barristers’ fees and told his accounts manager to cover it up – in a bid to prop up his firm – has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. The tribunal described as “extraordinary and incredible” evidence given in his defence.

The Bar Council has strongly attacked plans by the Bar Standards Board to force barristers to publish prices and internal complaints records. It said a requirement on chambers to publish hourly rates might actually end up decreasing transparency.

Deloitte is to become the final member of the Big Four accountancy firms to set up an alternative business structure (ABS), it announced today. It has previously said it would not go down this road due to the number of legal clients it has, but a spokeswoman explained that this position had been kept constantly under review.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has decided against striking off a solicitor it found had created and backdated correspondence and lied to both her client and her employer, after finding that a root cause of her misconduct was the firm’s culture and the pressure it exerted on her to meet billing targets. Her mental ill-health was the other factor.

The Government Legal Department has embraced design rewritten its public sector contract to make it much slimmer and more accessible to non-lawyers. The new contract was a collaborative effort that involved the Government Digital Service, focusing on user research, content design and interaction design.

David Gauke yesterday became the first solicitor to become Lord Chancellor, after he replaced the promoted David Lidington. There have now been six Lord Chancellors since the Conservatives came to power in 2010. Mr Gauke was an assistant at City firm Macfarlanes before his election in 2005.