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A man who posed as a barrister to con his victims out of thousands of pounds has been jailed for two years. Leonard Ogilvy, 51, of south London was found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of three counts of wilfully pretending to be a barrister and three counts of fraud by false representation.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned solicitors that professional negligence claims based on unbundled services have fuelled a “rapidly developing area of case law”. The regulator also revealed that it has already allowed a solicitor to practise from an unregulated business, a reform that has attracted stinging criticism.

Other jurisdictions are spreading lies that Brexit will reduce the quality and standing of England’s law and courts, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, has claimed as he urged the government to get on with tackling how cross-border civil law issues will work after the UK leaves the EU.

The co-founder of a law firm who received a police caution after punching a female colleague in the face has been rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The regulator has also rebuked a partner at a leading regional law firm for breaching client confidentiality.

The Legal Services Board has given the frontline regulators largely positive reviews of their performance, but warned the Solicitors Regulation Authority that it will be monitoring the impact of its controversial decision to end public and press access to board meetings

The groundbreaking alternative business structure owned by two major trade unions has begun its plan to provide legal services to other unions after signing a deal with the British Dietetic Association to launch BDA Legal. In other ABS news, Fairpoint Group plc has announced that its bank has assigned its debt to a new financier.

“Quick and dirty” online dispute resolution (ODR) is better than “no justice or absurdly over-priced justice”, the president of the Supreme Court has said in a wide-ranging speech that included a devastating critique of legal aid policy over the past two decades.

Leading travel company TUI says its efforts to raise awareness of the growth in holiday sickness claims is starting to pay off, with one law firm dropping nearly 2,000 cases it was bringing. It comes as ABTA has stepped up its campaign over the issue, calling for the introduction of fixed costs for such claims.

Hundreds of thousands of people face the prospect of pursuing their personal injury claims through the small claim court after new research showed that 80% of road traffic accident claims settled by solicitors over the past year were for less than £5,000.

Some 220 lawyers and technologists battled each other at a 24-hour hackathon over the weekend, overseen by the likes of the Lord Chief Justice and Professor Richard Susskind, to devise useful software tools that could support the forthcoming online courts. The winner used voice interaction and an online help assistant to assist litigants.