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The new Lord Chancellor needs to announce whether the “flawed” Prisons & Courts Bill is to be reintroduced, his Labour shadow said today. Richard Burgon said that one of David Lidington’s most urgent tasks was to reaffirm the Conservatives’ manifesto commitment “not to meddle” with the Human Rights Act during Brexit.

Many law schools are teaching law “as it was in the 1970s”, Professor Richard Susskind, IT adviser to the Lord Chancellor, has said. Professor Susskind said there was “little regard” for technology or artificial intelligence, leaving law graduates “not just ill-prepared for legal work as it is today, but very ill-prepared for how it will be tomorrow”.

The low level of external investment in law firms since alternative business structures were allowed more than five years ago “may be a symptom of weak competition in the market overall”, a Legal Services Board report has suggested. There are also cultural and management factors, it found.

The Solicitors Qualifying Exam could be postponed beyond its launch date of 2020, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has admitted. In a further development, the regulator has said it was possible that the all-powerful central assessor of the new exam could also be a course provider.

A direct access barrister has received his fifth suspension – for working during one of his previous suspensions. It comes as two barristers are disbarred after being jailed for fraud and the Solicitors Regulation Authority supports move to reduce the standard of proof at Bar disciplinary tribunals.

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.