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The longest and most expensive case brought in the history of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has ended with high-profile claimant lawyer Martyn Day, two of his colleagues and his firm Leigh Day fully exonerated. A former head of British forces in Iraq said the SRA should appeal.

Two partners who acted both for former clients of a law firm shut down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and for one of that firm’s solicitors have been fined by a disciplinary tribunal. However, they had to accept higher fines than had been agreed with the regulator to satisfy the tribunal’s view of the seriousness of their misconduct.

Slater & Gordon faces its third shareholder class action after it announced yesterday that it had been served with a letter before action. Notably, however, the period under scrutiny precedes the Quindell deal, the disastrous impact of which on S&G’s share price is the focus of the first action to be filed last October.

Claimant personal injury lawyers yesterday urged their colleagues to report law firms bringing fake holiday sickness claims after it emerged that the Solicitors Regulation Authority is investigating around 15 reports of potential misconduct.

An in-house solicitor has won £18,000 in libel damages after a post on two football fan websites wrongly claimed that he had been struck off. Graham Woodward works for the Oyston Group of companies, which includes Blackpool Football Club, many of whose supporters have been campaigning against its owner for some time.

CrowdJustice, the online funding platform for public interest legal cases, has raised $2m (£1.5m) from an investment round to expand its presence in the United States. CrowdJustice’s founder and chief executive told Legal Futures that it was an important time to be in the US to help give voice to people “between elections”.

Two partners at a high street firm have each been fined £35,000 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for multiple accounts rule breaches – very much at the higher end of the financial penalties it usually hands out. One was also found to have breached the money laundering regulations and both failed to act with integrity.

The president of the Competition Appeal Tribunal has reproached the Law Society for a “deeply unimpressive” explanation of its failure to disclose all the documents it should have done in the Socrates case. It is the second time that the society’s conduct of the case has been singled out for criticism by Mr Justice Roth.

The senior partner of a south London law firm has been sanctioned by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for unprofessional and “completely unacceptable” correspondence with a litigant in person, in which he accused her of lying, disgraceful behaviour and arguing with a judge “like a fisherwoman”.

Insurance law firm BLM has set up a specialist data analytics team to help its lawyers make better predictions about their cases. Headed by a solicitor and a data scientist, it uses machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), to predict the length, cost and result of litigation.