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The director of a lead generation company that was fined £200,000 for sending out thousands of spam text messages over personal injury, PPI and other claims, has now been disqualified as a director for six years for showing “disregard for the law”.

A group of volunteer lawyers and software developers worked over last weekend to create a new app to help travellers impacted by the Trump administration’s ‘immigration ban’, in what has been described as a “fantastic example of rapid prototyping and iterative design”.

The Bar Council has appointed Thrings and Veale Wasborough Vizards as the first members of a new panel that will help barristers “delicately” recover unpaid fees from solicitors. More firms are expected to join the panel, and they offer a choice of payment options, including conditional fee agreements and fixed fees.

An eminent tax lawyer and former partner at leading London law firms has been struck off following his conviction for multiple pornography offences – but he continues to practise from an unregulated entity. He is also a former president of the Chartered Institute of Taxation.

Small law firms should not be exempt from any new requirement to publish complaints data, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has argued. It said the information should be incorporated into the beefed-up ‘digital register’ planned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Bob Neill, Conservative MP and chairman of the justice select committee, has accused the Ministry of Justice of “firing in entirely the wrong direction” in its plans to reform low-value personal injury claims. He said the focus should be on putting claims management companies out of business.

One of the country’s top white-collar crime lawyers and a former head of legal affairs of GCHQ have been fined for advising a client to remove material from their premises ahead of a police search. It was the Crown Prosecution Service that complained to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

A solicitor acting for a father in a care case has been reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority after it emerged she was in a personal relationship with a witness. Her Honour Judge Cameron in Medway Family Court said it was the third occasion such an instance had occurred with this solicitor.

Baker McKenzie, the world’s second biggest law firm, has announced plans to introduce due diligence software based on machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, as part of an innovation drive that looks to import ‘design thinking’ into how it delivers legal services.

Most listed UK businesses with a strong legal element did not prove good investments in 2016, although litigation finance business Burford Capital and national law firm Gateley both bucked the trend in eye-catching fashion, a Legal Futures analysis has found.