Latest news

The first private equity fund to invest in a high street law firm that has now put money into a ‘dispersed’ law firm has said it is “business as usual” despite Brexit and it would welcome further approaches from solicitors.

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission has launched an investigation into whether Slater & Gordon’s accounts have been falsified, it emerged last night. In particular, it is looking to determine whether financial records and accounts over a 22-month period were deliberately falsified or manipulated.

More than half of claimant personal injury (PI) law firms will be forced to shut down or look for other work if the government’s proposed reforms go through, a survey has found – and Lord Justice Jackson’s separate review of fixed recoverable costs could then put the rest out of business.

Plans by the Ministry of Justice to impose fixed-term contracts on fee- paid judges could be unlawful, the Bar Council has warned. The move has also been strongly attacked by the Law Society, which said solicitors could in future see judicial appointment as a gamble with their careers at their firms.

Hudgells Solicitors has opened up a new front in the battle over the government’s proposed PI reforms by saying that there is a far better and easier way to reform rehabilitation provision that does not involve “the unexpected and dangerous reforms hidden away at the back of its recent consultation”.

The UK government must secure a high level of access to the single market, with a “clear and sensible transition period” to minimise the damage to legal services, TheCityUK has warned. Without it, the pressure group said, there would be a “high risk [of] considerable losses in financial and reputational terms to the legal services sector over the long term”.

A solicitor who did not honour the terms of his consultancy agreement with a law firm and sought £140 in fees directly from clients through his unregulated business has been fined £2,000 by the Solicitors Regulation Authority – nearly 15 times the money at stake.

National law firm Setfords Solicitors has become the latest to take external investment after securing a £3.75m injection from the Business Growth Fund (BGF) to support its expansion plans. It has taken a minority stake, the second time it has done so with a law firm after putting £5m into McMillan Williams in early 2015.

Lawyers who meet new standards of transparency over the price and service standards they offer could display a logo to show the public that they meet best practice, the Competition and Markets Authority has suggested. The detail of its 518-page report showed significant concerns that the lack of transparency was leading to some consumers being overcharged.

There is fast-growing growing demand for free legal advice, with family law now the most requested area of law, according to the experience of LawWorks, the solicitors’ national pro bono charity. Its clincis responded to over 53,000 enquiries, a 24% increase on the previous year.