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The Legal Services Board has given the frontline regulators largely positive reviews of their performance, but warned the Solicitors Regulation Authority that it will be monitoring the impact of its controversial decision to end public and press access to board meetings

The groundbreaking alternative business structure owned by two major trade unions has begun its plan to provide legal services to other unions after signing a deal with the British Dietetic Association to launch BDA Legal. In other ABS news, Fairpoint Group plc has announced that its bank has assigned its debt to a new financier.

“Quick and dirty” online dispute resolution (ODR) is better than “no justice or absurdly over-priced justice”, the president of the Supreme Court has said in a wide-ranging speech that included a devastating critique of legal aid policy over the past two decades.

Leading travel company TUI says its efforts to raise awareness of the growth in holiday sickness claims is starting to pay off, with one law firm dropping nearly 2,000 cases it was bringing. It comes as ABTA has stepped up its campaign over the issue, calling for the introduction of fixed costs for such claims.

Hundreds of thousands of people face the prospect of pursuing their personal injury claims through the small claim court after new research showed that 80% of road traffic accident claims settled by solicitors over the past year were for less than £5,000.

Some 220 lawyers and technologists battled each other at a 24-hour hackathon over the weekend, overseen by the likes of the Lord Chief Justice and Professor Richard Susskind, to devise useful software tools that could support the forthcoming online courts. The winner used voice interaction and an online help assistant to assist litigants.

A law firm referred to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) by the Court of Appeal earlier this year has been shut down by the regulator. Neumans, a City firm specialising in criminal law, had a further office in Manchester, and, according to the Law Society website, employed 20 solicitors before it was shut yesterday.

The former clients of a solicitor whose dishonesty left them in what a High Court judge described as a ‘Kafkaesque’ situation that wrongly led to their bankruptcy, have seemingly reached the end of the road in seeking legal restitution.

A barrister who continued to offer immigration law advice after being disbarred has been jailed and branded a “charlatan” by the sentencing judge for taking advantage of “vulnerable and often desperate people”.

All cross-border civil legal matters started before Brexit should continue to operate under EU law after the UK leaves the union, the European Commission has proposed. However, it has left the question of what should happen to matters that post-date Brexit up for negotiation.