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AIM-listed law firm Gateley is keen to explore acquisitions of further non-legal businesses, it said yesterday as it announced that the revenue in the six months to the end of October was up by almost 19% on the same period last year. It has also poured millions of shares into an incentive scheme for partners.

The Legal Services Board is to reduce its cost to the profession to the lowest level since the oversight regulator was established in 2009. Its draft business plan for 2017/18, published yesterday for consultation, anticipated a £150,000 reduction on the current year’s budget to £3.85m.

A Hull solicitor has become the latest to be struck off after borrowing millions from the controversial Axiom Legal Financing Fund which have not been paid back. He drew down £3.15m of a £20m facility to prop up the firm, which accountants Baker Tilly had declared to be insolvent.

The government yesterday began laying the ground for the online resolution of certain employment disputes, in the first sector-specific example of plans to transform the justice system. It also set out greater uses of case officers among other recommendations of Lord Justice Briggs that are being adopted.

Some 810 solicitors from England and Wales will have been admitted in Ireland by the end of 2016 to protect their status in a post-Brexit Europe, figures from Dublin have revealed. The Law Society of Ireland said there were few signs at the moment of any of them taking out practising certificates or their firms opening offices in the country.

A male solicitor has been found guilty of discussing with a vulnerable female client a third his age that she might make good an unpaid bill with a topless photo shoot and possibly sexual activity. He was also found to have watched pornography in his office with her.

The founders of an alternative business structure which helps insolvency practitioners to process mis-selling claims against financial institutions have now launched a litigation fund. It is being bankrolled by Steve Clark, founder of investment management company Omni Partners.

A central London law firm has launched a fixed-fee family arbitration service in a bid to slash what it says is now an average £70,000 cost for divorcing people to reach a financial settlement. It comes as research shows those who have been through a divorce are less likely than the average to see lawyers as truthful.

The BBC has undermined a Law Society call to trial online convictions with cases of TV licensing evasion, after the broadcaster highlighted flaws in its argument. The society has recommended trying out online convictiosn in summary-only, non-imprisonable offences with TV licence evasion.

Law firms are unnecessarily afraid of operating on fixed fees, and need to take a more commercial approach to how they market and price their services, according to the solicitor who created The Law Superstore. He said he had also found that firms do not monitor how much work their marketing generates.