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Barristers who are cleared of misconduct by a disciplinary tribunal can still be sanctioned for breaching the BSB Handbook, under new changes to the rules approved by the Legal Services Board. The Bar Standards Board said the changes aimed to fill a “gap” in its disciplinary powers.

Two alternative business structures have moved to extend their reach to corporate finance advisory work with separate joint ventures. Cardiff-based Greenaway Scott Group has launched a boutique as part of a joint venture with Lime Finance, while Needle Partners in Leeds has teamed up with Sheffield-based corporate advice firm Mackenzie Spencer.

Legal regulators have responded cautiously to the Competition and Markets Authority’s recommendations on price transparency, pledging to pilot regulatory requirements and test their effects on the lawyers and firms they regulate. They promised to implement controversial measures to encourage lawyers to publish prices if possible.

A junior associate at Dentons has been arrested for allegedly threatening to send confidential and sensitive information – including financial reports and details of how the firm determined its billing rates – to a legal blog if the firm did not hand over around £160,000 and a piece of artwork from its office.

Andrew Grech has stood down as group chief executive of Slater & Gordon after a recapitalisation deal was agreed with its lenders that will see them take control of the embattled law firm. The deal is intended to provide the firm with “a sustainable level of senior secured debt and a stable platform for its future operation”, it said.

A solicitor who deliberately broke professional rules by releasing confidential client files so as to help convict a murderer has agreed to leave the law. He signed up to a regulatory settlement agreement with the Solicitors Regulation Authority to avoid a likely strike-off by a disciplinary tribunal.

Almost half of the chief executives of lawtech start-ups in the UK are former lawyers, more than twice as many as from business and three times those from a software background, according to a report. However, a legal background was not essential to success, the report noted.

The growth of ‘professional’ McKenzie Friends risks the boundaries between regulated and non-regulated representatives “becoming blurred”, a circuit judge has warned, as she upheld a decision to exclude from a family case a man chosen by one of the parties to be their McKenzie Friend. She also criticised him for describing his role as ‘quasi-solicitorial’.

Shares in Fairpoint Group have been temporarily suspended after its bank pulled its backing for the legal services business. The company said that because AIB Group (UK) plc was unwilling to provide the level of on-going support it had requested, it was unable to sign-off the audit of its 2016 annual report and accounts.

An alternative business structure specialising in property recovery and tenant evictions has been acquired by a major property industry insurer, Hamilton Fraser. Landlord Action Limited – whose founder fronts Channel 5 series Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords – plans to expand its fixed-fee landlord and letting agent-focused services.