Latest news

A high-profile tax silk has taken less than a day to successfully crowdfund £10,000 to take legal advice over whether it is Parliament, rather than the prime minister, that has the power to trigger article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and the formal start of the UK’s exit from the European Union.

A barrister who failed to pay a fine and costs imposed by a disciplinary tribunal and then ignored the Bar Standards Board’s efforts to contact him for four years, has been suspended from practising. Meanwhile, another barrister has been reprimanded for telling the CPS she was qualified for a role there when she was not.

Making law firms publish details of complaints and average prices on their websites will significantly improve the legal market for clients, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has argued. Its newly published annual report renews the panel’s push for open data, even though the Legal Services Board recently cast doubt on some of its key recommendations.

The new not-for-profit personal injury marketing collective that is looking to spend £12m in its first year has gone live under two of its three brands. Created by legal digital marketing agency mmadigital, the collective, National Injury Claimline, also says it has built technology that allows it to adjust its marketing on a real-time basis.

Unregulated legal services providers are generally cheaper and more innovative than regulated law firms, but consumers need to understand the risks of using them, Legal Services Board research has found. The small scale of the problems they cause is such that the oversight regulator said it would not take steps to introduce regulation.

The Law Society has told MPs that plans to give the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and other regulators full independence should be shelved because of the uncertainty caused by the EU Referendum. The society and SRA also clashed on the former’s bid to take over control of setting professional standards.

A former employment solicitor at trade union firm Thompsons who was only elected as an MP last year was yesterday named the Shadow Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn replaced most of this shadow cabinet after the unprecedented string of resignations.

The stock market falls on the back of the EU Referendum has hit an ABS-owning property company the most, as well AIM-listed legal businesses with a personal injury (PI) element, a Legal Futures analysis has shown. The PI hit looks surprising given that the current state of political uncertainty is likely to be good news for the claimant market.

Yesterday’s Shadow Cabinet rebellion has included the resignation of the two top legal figures in the Labour Party – Shadow Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and Shadow Attorney General Karl Turner. Lord Falconer, well known as a close ally of Tony Blair, gave no statement as to why he resigned, but Mr Turner – MP for Hull East – published on Twitter the letter he sent to leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The Law Society’s budgeted costs of £637,000 to defend the competition law action brought over its Conveyancing Quality Scheme are disproportionate and should be capped at nearly half that amount, the president of the Competition Appeal Tribunal has ruled. The society has instructed City giant Norton Rose Fulbright.