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While the top end of recent law graduates are second only to business students in their earning power, the average wage law graduates receive does not stand out among other occupations, a massive government study has found. It highlighted too that an earnings gap between men and women entering the law opened up at the very start of their careers.

A solicitor has been struck off for the second time and ordered to pay costs of almost £66,000 after dishonestly misleading mortgage lenders in order to service clients of a firm which was excluded from lenders’ panels. He also allowed his client account to be used as an escrow banking facility to lend credibility to dubious transactions involving diamonds and fine art.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s decision to allow solicitors to practise from unregulated law firms opens up the prospects of insurers and others offering their customers legal advice and law firms restructuring themselves to handle all unreserved work in an unregulated business, it was predicted yesterday.

The Advertising Standards Authority has rejected a complaint by a solicitor that the Law Society misled consumers by claiming that all members of its Conveyancing Quality Scheme go through “rigorous examination and testing to demonstrate that they have a high level of knowledge, skills, experience and practice”.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to press ahead with allowing practising solicitors to deliver unreserved services to the public from unregulated organisations, as part of a radical shake-up of the way it oversees the profession. At its heart are a seven-page code of conduct for solicitors and six-page code for firms.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has dropped a new definition of ‘client money’ which would have excluded fees and disbursements in response to the concerns of practitioners, but is otherwise moving ahead with a huge rewrite of the accounts rules that reduces them from 41 pages to just seven, and approves the use of third-party managed accounts.

The case for excluding paid McKenzie Friends from the courts “has not yet been made out”, research for the Bar Council has concluded. The research found that most of the work carried out by paid McKenzie Friends was delivered outside court, and advocacy was merely “the tip of the iceberg”.

David Lidington has become the fourth Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice in just over two years after Liz Truss became the only member of the cabinet to be demoted following the election. The fourth non-lawyer to hold the post, his record indicates little connection with legal issues to date.

Friday’s ruling of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal to clear Leigh Day and three of its lawyers in the longest and most expensive prosecution ever has brought into the spotlight questions about the burden of proof in disciplinary proceedings and the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s push for greater internal fining powers, it has been suggested.

A former claims company manager has been fined for leading a team involved in ‘blagging’ calls to illegally obtain personal data from insurance companies that they could sell on to personal injury law firms. Meanwhile, there have been more raids as part of an investigation into nuisance calls linked to the theft of data from car repair centres.