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A highly experienced solicitor who breached the Money Laundering Regulations 2007 in a property transaction that led to a £500,000 fraud did not act dishonestly, the High Court has ruled. As a result, it dismissed a subrogated claim brought by the insurers of London law firm Pemberton Greenish to make her cover what they had to pay out.

A thousand solicitors and barristers who would have been eliminated from the recorder appointment competition but for a meltdown of the Judicial Appointments Commission’s website on Wednesday have instead got through to the next round.

Two law firms have found themselves ‘named and shamed’ in the government’s latest list of businesses that failed to pay workers the national minimum wage – although for one of them it amounted to an underpayment of 50p a week.

The recovery of Slater & Gordon’s UK business is going “slower than expected”, with trading results being adjusted downwards as a result, and the negative mood about the firm is now hitting its home business in Australia, it has admitted in a trading update that appeared to be preparing investors for disappointing half-year results later this month.

The Judicial Appointments Commission’s website crashed yesterday under the weight of up to 2,500 solicitors and barristers trying to take the online qualifying test that marks the first stage of a recorder recruitment competition that Lord Chancellor Liz Truss highlighted for its potential to improve diversity on the bench.

The Legal Services Board will next year carry out the first formal assessment of how the profession’s regulators have performed in improving diversity in their parts of the law, it has announced. Publishing its revised diversity guidance, the board said, however, that it expects to see the guidance influencing activities this year.

A former chief executive of Cheshire-based solicitors Forster Dean, who is now a leading football administrator in Northern Ireland, has been suspended by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal over accounts rule breaches.

Disciplinary cases involving solicitors are now akin to High Court trials and there needs to be a major overhaul that would make the Solicitors Regulation Authority responsible for handing out all sanctions, including strike-offs, a former prosecutor has said.

The trial of a large-scale ‘crash for cash’ gang which used accident management companies to funnel 111 fraudulent claims to 16 insurers has ended with five defendants found guilty of conspiracy to defraud, on top of seven who had already admitted their involvement.

The High Court has overturned a disciplinary tribunal finding against a barrister found to have pestered three women at a chambers summer party. Mrs Justice Lang said Stephen Howd’s “inappropriate, and at times offensive, behaviour was a consequence of his medical condition”, exacerbated by excessive alcohol.