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HM Courts and Tribunals Service has delayed the start of the flexible operating hours pilot until next February, its chief executive announced today. Susan Acland-Hood also made it clear that she was listening to the concerns raised by the legal profession about both the current problems with listing and how flexible hours might work.

A district judge has explained how he had to throw a McKenzie Friend out of his court after she disrupted proceedings and threatened complaints against him and the other side’s solicitors. Mary Bennett was aiding the husband in the final hearing of a wife’s application for financial remedies in a divorce.

The boss of a claims management company specialising in holiday sickness has accused solicitors of failing to vet cases for cold calling and fraud and “living in a world of denial”. Richard Conroy, a food scientist and founder of sickholiday.com, told solicitors: “You can do a far better job of vetting the cases coming to you.”

The owner of a claims management company fined £175,000 for cold-calling consumers and described as demonstrating “the worst excesses of the industry”, has now been banned as a director for six years. The Information Commissioner’s Office received 5,535 complaints in the space of just four months.

A law firm network was launched last month aimed at smaller practices and has already held two meetings, it has emerged. Hexagon Legal Network was set up by six sole practitioners, including a former Sole Practitioners Group chair, Kent solicitor Hilary Underwood.

Leading personal injury lawyers told yesterday’s PI Futures conference that there is “all to play for” on the Civil Liability Bill as a “nervous” governments seeks to avoid a damaging parliamentary defeat. Delegates were also urged to write to the Law Society to demand it take more action, and to MPs about the impact on access to justice.

A solicitor jailed for the attempted murder of his wife while suffering from severe depression has been handed an indefinite suspension by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal due to the “wholly exceptional” circumstances of his case. Normally such an offence would lead to a strike-off.

The Bar Standards Board issued an unprecedented public apology to a QC yesterday for the errors and delays it made in clearing him of misconduct. Welcoming the move, Khawar Qureshi QC outlined concerns about the potential for abuse of the BSB process to unfairly attack barristers.

SME law firms are investing their marketing budgets in old-style strategies they know are often ineffective, rather than explore new technologies that are already taking hold in other sectors, according to research being launched at today’s PI Futures conference in Liverpool.

NAHL plc, the marketing and services business that owns National Accident Helpline, has announced a small dip in revenue and profits for the first half of 2017. The company warned investors last year that work to reshape its personal injury offering, in light of the upcoming government reforms, would lead to a temporary dampening of cash generation and profits.