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Law firms must not use non-disclosure agreements to prevent the reporting of professional misconduct – including sexual harassment or misconduct towards other employees or clients – the Solicitors Regulation Authority warned today.

It should not be “beyond the wit of man” to design a system for low-value personal injury (PI) claims where insurers and their customers handle cases without the involvement of lawyers, the head of one of the country’s biggest insurance companies. The comments came alongside a claimant warning that the PI reforms left plenty of “meat” for CMCs.

A law firm with offices in Italy and England has reached the end of the line in challenging a ruling that it was under a duty to warn British and Irish property investors of the risks of investing in a part of Italy associated with organised crime. The Court of Appeal upheld the decision and the Supreme Court has now refused to hear a second appeal.

The Court of Appeal yesterday spelt out the higher standards to which solicitors are held in defining what “integrity” means for the purposes of disciplinary action. It said integrity “connotes adherence to the ethical standards of one’s own profession” and involved “more than mere honesty”.

Women solicitors are significantly less likely to seek partnership and twice as likely to cite work/life balance or stress as the reason than men, according to a career satisfaction survey. The survey also found that employers are responding to the need to retain valued employees.

Three-quarters (74%) of male lawyers believe there has been progress on gender equality in the legal profession over the past five years but less than half (48%) of their female colleagues agree, a global survey has found. It also said that unconscious bias was the most commonly identified barrier preventing women from reaching senior positions.

The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) has set up an alternative business structure to provide legal services to its 500 member churches and other Christian groups. Edward Connor Solicitors, a charity regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, went live on 1 March and is named after FIEC’s founder, Edward Poole-Connor.

The judiciary has threatened to withdraw from the Online Court pilot – which could go public by the end of this month – if there are “any further false claims or data” about the project from Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunals Service. The pilot, for money claims under £10,000, could move from invitation-only to ‘public beta’ stage on 26 March.

The government’s eagerly awaited LASPO review is unlikely to be published by July, which was the original goal, justice secretary David Gauke admitted today. The Lord Chancellor has also made it clear that the Ministry of Justice would not be carrying out any of its own research as part of the review.

Lawyers will be vital to high-end fintech deals even after blockchain transactions become mainstream, according to a solicitor at the forefront of innovating with cutting-edge technology. He was speaking after helping to secure a pioneering use of the distributed ledger to transfer financial securities.