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Reactions from key legal services industry bodies to the Legal Services Board’s blueprint for radical form of legal regulation have ranged from enthusiastic welcome to anger at its timing, while the politician who introduced the Legal Services Act 2007 said tackling unmet legal need was more of a priority.

The uncertainty that has followed the vote for Britain’s exit from the European Union should not slow down reforms in the legal services market, Paul Philip, the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s chief executive, has warned.

One of the first local authority alternative business structures is projected to increase its turnover 30% over the next year, and has already cut the fee rates for its shareholder clients by 20%, it revealed yesterday. LGSS Law is now also advising more than 100 client organisations within the public and not-for-profit sectors.

Four in ten managing partners at leading law firms see alternative providers such as the Big Four accountants and insurers as the biggest threat to the legal profession, according to a survey published today. It also found firms more likely to see growth coming from investment in technology and hiring teams, rather than mergers.

Four law firms have joined forces to launch Collaborative Employment Law (CEL), a group aiming to bring a novel mediated approach to employment disputes as an alternative to litigation, modelled on a technique developed by family lawyers.

A solicitor who fraudulently claimed £37,000 in income tax repayments has been handed a suspended prison sentence and told she was “wholly unsuitable to be a solicitor”. She over-claimed tax repayments. She did this by inflating expenses, including staff costs and refunds relating to clients’ divorce fees.

The legal market is set for a “second wave” of external investment, a leading corporate financier said today, describing it as “an inevitable snowball that is gathering pace”. He identified several markets – from criminal law to large commercial firms – where there were opportunities for investors.

The Legal Services Board has today outlined its blueprint for radical reform of legal regulation, including regulation by activity rather than professional title, and a single regulator for the entire profession. The oversight regulator said its plan was intended to be a “durable solution rather than a further stepping stone to liberalisation”.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has struck off a solicitor who colluded with his non-solicitor employee wife, an estate agent, to misappropriate £10,000 after submitting to the Land Registry that a property had sold for less than the price actually paid.

The latest skirmish in a long-running row between two solicitors whose partnership dissolved in acrimony, has seen the High Court rule that the failure of one to mention to his creditors that he had been struck off was a “material irregularity”.