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North Yorkshire County Council has become the latest local authority to set up an alternative business structure (ABS) with the launch of First North Law. It comes as one of the country’s largest ABSs – Enact Conveyancing – has significantly expanded its presence in Yorkshire, creating 160 new jobs.

Legal services marketing giant NAHL is to create a third alternative business structure this year, which will focus on helping injured people navigate small claims if and when the government’s whiplash reforms happen in April 2019. The news comes against the background of its 2017 annual results, which showed revenue up but profit down sharply.

Publication of the Civil Liability Bill yesterday met with a polarised response and a commitment from the chief executives of 26 leading insurance companies to pass on the savings to customers – dismissed as empty promises by claimant solicitors.

The issue of judicial bullying has come up again, with more barristers outlining the behaviour they have faced in court and the Bar Council chairman condemning “bullying or inappropriate treatment” by judges. The leader of the Northern Circuit has advised using informal lines of communication through heads of chambers to handle bullying that is not “egregious”.

Justice Secretary David Gauke today finally published the Civil Liability Bill, which the government said “offered hope” of lower insurance premiums to millions of motorists by reducing the “unacceptably high number of whiplash claims”. The bill also contains changes to the way the personal injury discount rate is calculated.

The proportion of applications to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal by litigants in person has gone up by 50% in the last 10 years, the Master of the Rolls has said. He said the judiciary was considering “the facilitation of settlement” of claims in the Online Court.

The Legal Services Board has come under unprecedented pressure to reject plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to introduce a centralised Solicitors Qualifying Examination. City lawyers, law lecturers and Welsh speakers have called on the LSB not to approve the application, while MPs asked for the decision to be postponed for six months.

A solicitor who “took advantage” of his position at the law centre where he worked by privately charging immigration and asylum clients ineligible for legal aid has been struck off. He charged clients a total of £8,000 on a private paying basis while working at the Gloucester Law Centre.

A solicitor who took £1m from the legal aid fund by fabricating cases and making hundreds of improper claims, and then abandoned his practice, has been struck off. On the first day of a two-day Legal Aid Agency visit, he said he had a problem with one of his children and had to leave – the investigating officer never saw him again.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s warning about using non-disclosure agreements in cases of sexual harassment puts solicitors in a difficult position and may even discourage reporting, it has been claimed.