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The High Court has overturned a decision by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal to clear a solicitor who borrowed money from the controversial Axiom Legal Financing Fund of charges of misconduct – five months after another ruling involving two solicitors who took an Axiom loan was also reversed.

A leading provider of consultancy and expert witness services to the engineering sector has launched an alternative business structure (ABS) in a bid to add regulated legal services to its offering for corporate clients. The company is headed by the former senior partner of Wragge & Co.

A company behind 100m nuisance calls has been fined a record £400,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office after more than 1,000 people complained about automated calls. The calls, made over an 18-month period, related to a wide range of subjects but mainly road traffic accident claims and PPI compensation.

A virtual law firm, Keystone Law, has beaten the big players to achieve the highest “success rate” in litigation in the senior courts, a report has found. Data analysts Premonition also said litigants in person were more successful in winning cases as a group than the profession, as it robustly defended its quantitative approach to recording the performance of lawyers.

Fee income per partner at larger firms soared last year from an average of £777,000 to almost £1.4m, a survey has found. Accountants MHA, who produce an annual benchmarking report, said the main reason was a fall in the number of equity partners at these firms, helped by an increase in profitable work.

A leading City law firm has failed to persuade the Court of Appeal to overturn a ruling that it was negligent in failing to highlight a major development planned to take place near a £26m residential property whose purchase it was handling.

Two leading lawtech organisations have linked with the judiciary to stage a hackathon which will develop tools aimed at assisting the online court, it has emerged. The Society for Computers and Law, London lawtech community Legal Geek, and the Judiciary of England and Wales, will jointly host the event on 1-2 July.

A barrister who specialises in advising technology companies has launched a Bar Standards Board entity to house her employment practice, while the legal group she co-founded is poised to release a product geared to helping clients navigate European data legislation.

A contract review technology company incubated by Cambridge-based law firm Taylor Vinters has raised more than $1m in its latest funding round, with investors including former Vodafone UK CEO Guy Laurence, and Michael Findlay, chairman of Morgan Sindall and former co-head of investment banking for Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

The Government Legal Service discriminated against a law graduate with Asperger’s Syndrome by refusing to make reasonable adjustments when she took a test that forms part of the application process for training contracts, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has found.