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The crisis engulfing the law firm that sent tweets ‘boasting’ about its success in defending local authorities in special educational needs and disability tribunals has escalated further today, with three council clients cutting their ties to the firm.

The Law Society’s failed conveyancing portal Veyo recorded a loss of £11.4m in its last financial year, with rival product Free2Convey the cause of its demise, according to newly published annual accounts. Some £6.8m of the loss was put down to research and development expenditure, with a further £743,000 on 10 staff.

‘Named and shamed’ barrister Tariq Rehman has come top of the latest table of complaints about lawyers published by the Legal Ombudsman. He was subject to more complaints than the combined total recorded for the country’s two largest consumer law firms, Irwin Mitchell and Slater & Gordon.

The Legal Services Board has accused the Law Society of misrepresenting its views on McKenzie Friends. The oversight regulator objected to a Law Society press release that claimed the LSB had suggested that “legal aid cuts could be offset by unleashing non-professionals on the courts”.

In the second part of our interview with Legal Services Board chief executive Neil Buckley, he explains why the board is “very hopeful” that the Competition and Markets Authority “will come out with draft proposals that will help move the legal services market on”.

Unregulated providers of legal services are not as much of a problem as many assume and there is simply not the evidence to back a ban on paid-for McKenzie Friends, the chief executive of the Legal Services Board has told Legal Futures in his first interview since taking on the role.

A law firm which offended parents of children with special educational needs and disability through comments on Twitter over the weekend is to face an investigation from the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Milton Keynes-based Baker Small has apologised and made a contribution to charity over its conduct.

An “old-fashioned solicitor” whose firm “became a mess and spiralled downwards” has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. “Even if the respondent’s actions were not pre-mediated when he made the first transfer, by the one hundred and forty seventh transfer they must have been,” it said.

A barrister who overturned his disbarment at the Court of Appeal last year has been disbarred again. Damian McCarthy was found by a Bar disciplinary tribunal to have forged client care letters, after a direct access client complained.

Members of the Co-op are set to receive money back if they use the group’s legal services arm. As the Co-operative Group looks to recover from the reputational damage of recent times, it has unveiled its new logo – returning to the familiar design first used in the 1960s – and revised its membership offer.