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The Ministry of Justice has said it was “business as usual” on the housing and debt legal aid phone lines operated by Carillion Advice Services yesterday, following the collapse of the parent company. However, a law firm that markets a partnership with the paralegal business declined to talk about the implications.

Former Labour cabinet minister Peter Hain has launched a blistering attack on leading UK/US law firm Hogan Lovells over what he said was its role in the Gupta family scandal in South Africa. The veteran anti-apartheid campaigner said he has asked the Solicitors Regulation Authority to withdraw Hogan Lovells’ authorisation and discipline “leading partners”.

A new report has spelt out the “formidable” competition the Big Four accountants could become in the legal market, given that the three largest of them alone turnover more than the biggest 100 law firms in the world combined. It was published in the wake of Deloitte becoming the last member of the Big Four to apply for an ABS licence.

The pioneering owner of an innovative law firm that was “ahead of its time” but failed has taken the highly unusual step of laying out the reasons why it did not work, and warned that “innovation is much more difficult and fraught with fiscal peril than most imagine”.

Solicitors setting up an alternative business structure this month in Marlborough, Wiltshire, have chosen to be regulated by the Bar Standards Board. It is understood to be the first time a BSB-regulated ABS has been created without barrister involvement.

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.