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The turnover of personal injury claims management companies (CMCs) has continued to tumble over the past year, falling 41% in just two years to £182m, according to the Ministry of Justice, which also highlighted how CMCs that offer damages-based agreements are struggling to comply with the law.

The group that owns London law firm Gordon Dadds today became the second listed law firm after the shareholders of what was Work Group plc yesterday approved the reverse takeover. The new company was admitted to trading on AIM today, with Gordon Dadds chief executive Adrian Biles owning 26.7% of the shares in issue.

National law firm Simpson Millar has insisted that it is “business as usual” after its listed parent copany, Fairpoint Group, announced its intention to appoint administrators. Last month, the group announced that its debt had been sold on and that a £5m funding facility had been provided to the legal services business.

The High Court has imposed a nine-month suspension on a senior solicitor after he successfully appealed his striking-off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. Mrs Justice Carr said the misconduct was serious, but not at the highest level, and also criticised the SRA for the delay in bringing the case and some of the allegations it made.

The team behind LawBot, the legal advice chatbot created last year by Cambridge University law students, is planning a live ‘lawyer v machine’ challenge similar to the one in which IBM’s Watson won the US quiz show Jeopardy. LawBot was relaunched earlier this week and has started signing up law firms keen to secure access to leads generated by the chatbot.

A solicitor has been sanctioned over the potential conflict of interest of acting where he stood to financially benefit from the proceeds of the transaction he was dealing with while working at a leading London law firm. Separately, an IT worker and business development manager have been banned from the profession after criminal convictions.

A man who set up two fraudulent claims management companies and another who helped him stage car crashes have been sentenced to more than 10 years in prison between them. The City of London Police has thanked the solicitors targeted by the fraudulent referrals for their co-operation.

A law firm with offices in Italy and England has lost its appeal against a High Court 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 number of barristers disbarred has more than doubled, the Bar Standards Board has said, with most of the cases relating to criminal convictions. The BSB warned also that the number of complaints involving use of social media by barristers was increasing.

A detrimental impact on diversity in the professions or the judiciary “is not a price the judges are willing to pay” for more flexible operating hours, according to the Court of Appeal judge leading the controversial pilot scheme.