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Co-operative Legal Services recorded a 22% jump in turnover in 2016 and tripled its profit as it continues to recover from the difficulties it experienced in previous years. The legal services operation is also to be brought together with the Co-op’s funerals business to create a Life Planning division.

The Legal Services Board has dropped plans to probe why it is taking women and those from ethnic minorities so long to reach senior roles in the profession. It also rejected the Law Society’s claim that it is putting too much emphasis on promoting competition at the expense of the other regulatory objectives it is meant to uphold.

Leading insurance law firm Hill Dickinson has successfully undertaken a landmark private prosecution over a fraudulent road traffic accident claim, in the wake of the separate jailing of four people over a fraud that costs solicitors’ firms and insurers hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The former boss of the first accident management company to buy a law firm and become an alternative business structure has been rebuked and fined £7,500 by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for 11 accounts rule breaches and two breaches of the SRA principles.

The Law Society has scrapped external freedom of information (FoI) adjudications in favour of reviews by an “independent member of staff”, it has emerged. The society is not subject to the FoI Act, but until now it has dealt with requests as if it was covered by the Act, which meant having an independent reviewer.

An “shameless” woman who abused her position at solicitors’ firms to fraudulently gain more than £700,000 has been jailed for three and a half years. Caprice Chaneele Lindo, 40, of Bradford, pleaded guilty to money laundering and eight counts of fraud at a previous hearing.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is planning not only to combine its two law firm panels into one, but also to give all the legal work involved to a single firm, Legal Futures understands – leaving solicitors who have acted for decades as prosecutors out in the cold and questioning whether the regulator is taking the wrong approach.

Leading litigation firm Stewarts Law is “sufficiently well-funded” to cope with £2m intended to pay its fees and disbursements sitting frozen in its client account, while the true owner of the money is identified, the High Court has ruled.

City firm Clyde & Co has been fined £50,000 – the largest penalty issued against a law firm – and three of its partners £10,000 each for allowing its client account to be used as a banking facility and breaching anti-money laundering rules.

The Bar Standards Board is to launch a consultation this summer setting out the rule changes it needs to implement its fiercely contested training reforms, and among them will be a new route to qualification similar to solicitor apprenticeships.