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The government yesterday rejected criticism that its proposed ban on cold-calling did not go far enough and voted it into the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill. A minister said it was “convinced that the new clause will have the effect of making unwanted calls from claims management services unlawful”.

An accounts clerk at a west London law firm who faced false allegations of sexually harassing a fellow employee – who was the daughter of the owner – has won his claim of unfair constructive dismissal. After winning his claim first time around, he won it again on a reconsideration of the question of whether he had affirmed the firm’s breaches.

The Legal Ombudsman has ruled out investigating complaints about unregulated legal services, or collecting data about them, without a new source of funding. The service said it would be “inappropriate” to use money raised by a levy on the profession for this purpose.

Claimant solicitors and defendants have come together to attack the government’s proposed ban on cold-calling, with the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers describing it as a “broken promise”. ABTA joined the criticism as it emerged that the addition of holiday sickness claims to the fixed recoverable costs scheme is scheduled to come into force in April.

Reform of the legal system based on the views of a single or group of judges is “no longer acceptable”, the Senior President of Tribunals has said. Sir Ernest Ryder also warned against “privatising” justice by allowing companies to promote their own online dispute resolution outside of the law’s control.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has again decided against striking off a solicitor for proven dishonesty after it accepted that he was suffering from work-induced stress. The solicitor said one of his supervisors had described himself as being “like an abusive husband, always asking for forgiveness and saying it would be different”.

A solicitor has been struck off for conducting reserved activities when he was not entitled to do so and dishonestly misleading the regulator when challenged on it. After closing down his regulated firm, he set up an unregulated one but was found to have conducted both conveyancing and litigation.

A City law firm partner who had to pay £215,000 to settle his debt to the bank of his former firm, which had gone bust, was not able to deduct it from his earnings at his new firm for tax purposes, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

A new breed of specialist artificial intelligence (AI) lawyer will emerge within 20 years, but governments should only legislate on the subject once technology companies have had time to develop their own ethical principles, according to Microsoft. By that time, virtually all lawyers will rely on AI to assist them with their practice, it said.

The owner of a Manchester law firm which pursued personal injury cases without the consent of clients and also paid prohibited referral fees has been suspended for three years. His misconduct was “shocking and outrageous and had a significant adverse impact on the reputation of the profession”, according to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.