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Cardiff firm NewLaw yesterday confirmed that it is working with the Royal College of Nursing to launch an alternative business structure from 1 April. The news came with its owner, AIM-listed Redde plc, announcing big rises in income and profits for the second half of 2015.

Global law firms could in future recruit teenagers to their brands like football teams sign up junior apprentices, if an online recruitment platform that is targeting large employers takes off. The founders claim to be in advanced talks with magic circle law firms about adopting it.

England and Wales should follow the example of Scotland in banning McKenzie Friends from charging fees, the Judicial Executive Board has proposed. The board also said that McKenzie Friends should be renamed “court supporters”.

A trainee legal executive has been fined £2,000 by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for taking almost £24,000 from his law firm’s client account. BRM Solicitors said Joseph Aaron Cooper had betrayed its trust.

Tribunals are set to embrace online dispute resolution (ODR) in step with Lord Justice Briggs’ plans for an online court for civil cases, with the principle of ‘digital by default’ to the fore, the Senior President of Tribunals revealed yesterday. A pilot is to run in the Social Entitlement Chamber as a matter of priority.

Barristers specialising in professional negligence are more likely than colleagues in any other area of law to generate complaints, a report by the Bar Standards Board has found. The research found that ethnicity did not have an impact on complaints, but gender did, with men more likely to be complained about.

Slater & Gordon was yesterday granted a voluntary suspension of its shares on the Australian Stock Exchange following a period when their value has been increasing modestly. The request came ahead of the troubled law firm’s announcement of its financial results for the second half of 2015 next Monday.

The original contract lawyer business, Lawyers on Demand, is to merge with Australia’s AdventBalance in the first corss-continent merger of its type. The new business, to be called LOD from June, will still have Berwin Leighton Paisner – from which Lawyers on Demand sprang in 2007 – as a shareholder.

A Bar disciplinary tribunal has found ‘named and shamed’ barrister Tariq Rehman guilty of misconduct for a second time. In its latest ruling, the tribunal found that Mr Rehman had delayed or failed to refund fees and pay compensation awards to clients.

The Lord Chief Justice has predicted that the use of fixed costs will be extended gradually and not in “one big bang”, which people would find “uncomfortable”. Lord Thomas also indicated that litigants at the planned online court would be allowed “minimal legal assistance”.