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The Bar Standards Board has today begun licensing alternative business structures (ABSs), making it the fifth body granted the power. As with its regime for lawyer-only owned entities, it will specialise in ‘advocacy focused’ ABSs.

A senior partner who was found by an employment tribunal to have discriminated against, harassed and victimised a former equity partner at his firm, has been fined £2,000 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, which found his culpability to be “low” as his behaviour had “just crossed the line into discrimination”.

The partnership behind an pioneering online dispute resolution platform for divorce is to be disbanded for commercial reasons, and the venture will be replaced by a scaled-down project that will for the first time involve face-to-face contact with lawyers.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has dismissed Law Society concerns about disciplinary sanctions imposed on a law firm that paid referral fees to a domestic violence charity. It pointed out that the actions of leading legal aid firm Duncan Lewis were clear breaches of the SRA Handbook.

A Bar Standards Board-regulated entity has acquired more than 800 clients in less than 18 months, which it claims makes it the largest in the country, by capitalising on barristers’ relatively new right to conduct litigation. It also said that having the involvement of barristers from the start of a case speeds them up.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has closed down controversial Bolton law firm Asons shortly after it ceased trading and was sold to another practice, it emerged yesterday. Meanwhile, a set of accounts for the first six months of Asons’ current financial year indicated that it was turning around the previous year’s poor performance.

Yesterday’s publication of the government’s great repeal bill white paper gives comfort to EU lawyers currently practising in the UK – but not to UK firms’ operations across the EU, a leading regulatory lawyer has said.

There have been some significant thefts from client accounts in recent months, with one in four SME law firms having suffered a cyber-attack or fraud related loss in the last year, according to new research. The poll of 269 firms also showed that income and profit continues to rise, although cash remains an issue.

Consumers are gradually getting more comfortable with the idea of seeking legal advice from banks and insurance companies but enthusiasm remains muted, new research has found. YouGov also showed that two major law firms are succeeding in building a consumer brand.

The incoming chair of the Office for Legal Complaints – the body that oversees the Legal Ombudsman – is to sell her investments in two leading alternative business structures, it has been confirmed. The fact Wanda Goldwag had them only came into the public domain last Friday.