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One of the country’s biggest independent firms of will-writers has followed the example set by law firms like Stephens Scown and Gateley and introduced employee ownership in a multi-million pound deal with its previous owners.

The status and quality of legal representation for children before the Youth Court need to be raised first by an increase in legal aid rates and then by mandatory training for all solicitors and barristers appearing for them, a government-commissioned review has recommended.

A volume conveyancing firm has apologised after sending out letters to clients asking for an additional £200 fee to “prioritise” their files in the run-up to Christmas. Meanwhile, the Council for Licensed Conveyancers is to launch a ‘secure badge’ to help the firms it regulates combat their websites being cloned.

A “vast amount” of complex and lucrative international commercial work could be lost by UK lawyers if they are denied access to the EU legal services market as a result of Brexit, the Bar Council has warned – although some lawyers would “doubtless be in high demand in the short term for new, Brexit-related work”.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people around the world will be able to report incidents of persecution to international lawyers stealthily through everyday social media, after a hackathon backed by some of the largest UK law firms devised an app.

A shared legal services between four local authorities in Norfolk is set to create an alternative business structure (ABS). Norfolk Public Law – which trades as nplaw – is choosing to add the ABS alongside its existing practice, rather than transfer everything into the new company.

A solicitor who retained nearly £50,000 of client money for up to five years instead of paying professional disbursements has accepted a rebuke and fine to halt her referral to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

In the second of a series of features profiling lawtech start-ups, we look at TripleCheck, a business which scans a company’s computers to check compliance with software licences. It has also helped the UK government with identifying malicious internet hackers.

Conveyancers should set up a project to plan the future of their industry and start with a “blank sheet of paper”, Professor Richard Susskind has said. Conveyancing would look “radically different” a decade from now, he argued, and it was a mistake to think that this would be achieved by “leisurely evolution”.

Personal injury claims that fall into an enlarged small claims track under government reforms should be dealt with online rather than in court, an expert Civil Justice Council group has suggested to the Ministry of Justice. It said that moving cases to the county court would be the “worst answer” to the many problems the idea could cause.