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Family law specialists should be required to work under fixed fees, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has suggested as it ramped up its call for regulatory intervention to improve transparency in the market. It said family law was one area where it advised that regulators “should now consider mandating fixed fees”.

The uncertainties around the personal injury reforms in England and Wales has caused Australia’s ‘other’ listed law firm to row back on plans to enter the market. Shine Lawyers, a leading personal injury practice, has been talking about expanding to the UK, but in its 2016 annual report indicated that these are on hold.

A recently suspended solicitor has been allowed to work for a law firm as an unadmitted member of staff under very strict conditions, the Solicitors Regulation Authority announced yesterday. Meanwhile, a solicitor who acted for disgraced former MEP Ashley Mote has been referred to a disciplinary tribunal.

The range of wrongdoing at law firms has been demonstrated by a series of rebukes handed out by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in the past month. The most recent was that of a non-solicitor who was found while working as a conveyancing clerk to have created two e-mails which were purportedly from a client.

Finance staff at larger law firms are seeing their pay rise as the market becomes more competitive, a new survey has found – while those working for small firms were the least likely to have had a pay rise in the past year, despite proving the most loyal.

The Law Society has called for a ‘sandbox’ approach to regulatory reform that would allow changes to promote innovation to be tested safely. It also came out strongly against the idea of making it compulsory for law firms to publish ‘average’ prices of their services.

A solicitor has been removed from his posts as a deputy district judge and assistant coroner after the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found him guilty of misconduct. Andrew Pascoe was fined £20,000 earlier this year after being found guilty of 20 allegations about his management of a firm in which he was a partner.

Law firms that were insured by the now insolvent Enterprise Insurance have until today to arrange alternative cover. The Solicitors Regulation Authority said on Friday that around two-thirds of the 43 firms that were with the Gibraltar-based insurer have already secured alternative cover.

The Competition and Market Authority was right to conclude that there needs to be more transparency of price and service quality in the legal market, the Legal Services Board said today. But this has to be combined with both short and long-term regulatory reform.

Law firms of the future are likely to succeed by integrating non-lawyer specialists, such as project managers, into their businesses and collaborating with technology companies, it has been predicted. The profession also needs to train “ethically minded legal professionals who are equipped to keep modernising how they deliver legal services”.