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The case for excluding paid McKenzie Friends from the courts “has not yet been made out”, research for the Bar Council has concluded. The research found that most of the work carried out by paid McKenzie Friends was delivered outside court, and advocacy was merely “the tip of the iceberg”.

David Lidington has become the fourth Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice in just over two years after Liz Truss became the only member of the cabinet to be demoted following the election. The fourth non-lawyer to hold the post, his record indicates little connection with legal issues to date.

Friday’s ruling of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal to clear Leigh Day and three of its lawyers in the longest and most expensive prosecution ever has brought into the spotlight questions about the burden of proof in disciplinary proceedings and the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s push for greater internal fining powers, it has been suggested.

A former claims company manager has been fined for leading a team involved in ‘blagging’ calls to illegally obtain personal data from insurance companies that they could sell on to personal injury law firms. Meanwhile, there have been more raids as part of an investigation into nuisance calls linked to the theft of data from car repair centres.

The longest and most expensive case brought in the history of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has ended with high-profile claimant lawyer Martyn Day, two of his colleagues and his firm Leigh Day fully exonerated. A former head of British forces in Iraq said the SRA should appeal.

Two partners who acted both for former clients of a law firm shut down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and for one of that firm’s solicitors have been fined by a disciplinary tribunal. However, they had to accept higher fines than had been agreed with the regulator to satisfy the tribunal’s view of the seriousness of their misconduct.

Slater & Gordon faces its third shareholder class action after it announced yesterday that it had been served with a letter before action. Notably, however, the period under scrutiny precedes the Quindell deal, the disastrous impact of which on S&G’s share price is the focus of the first action to be filed last October.

Claimant personal injury lawyers yesterday urged their colleagues to report law firms bringing fake holiday sickness claims after it emerged that the Solicitors Regulation Authority is investigating around 15 reports of potential misconduct.

An in-house solicitor has won £18,000 in libel damages after a post on two football fan websites wrongly claimed that he had been struck off. Graham Woodward works for the Oyston Group of companies, which includes Blackpool Football Club, many of whose supporters have been campaigning against its owner for some time.

CrowdJustice, the online funding platform for public interest legal cases, has raised $2m (£1.5m) from an investment round to expand its presence in the United States. CrowdJustice’s founder and chief executive told Legal Futures that it was an important time to be in the US to help give voice to people “between elections”.