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Kent County Council, which tendered for a joint venture partner to set up alternative business structure last autumn, has narrowed the list of potential candidates to one, it has emerged. The bidder will make a presentation to Kent’s commissioning advisory board in early September.

There is a “compelling case to introduce a new regulatory settlement” for the legal market in the medium term, the Legal Services Board told the government today. A report said it was “increasingly clear” that the absence of full separation between the representative bodies and legal regulators is proving “a strong impediment to progress”.

The agreement between Slater & Gordon’s professional services division (PSD) and the country’s biggest high street insurance broker has come to an end just months after it signed a multi-year renewal.

The Bar Standards Board is to dispense with its ‘list of defaulting solicitors’ and replace it with a new rule allowing barristers to refuse work under the cab-rank rule where there is an “unacceptable risk” that they will not get paid.

A law firm which demanded the details of people who had contacted the Solicitors Regulation Authority to allege misconduct has been firmly rebuffed by the Law Society’s freedom of information commissioner.

A Bar Council report on the working lives of women barristers has revealed more clearly than ever the shocking sexism that some of them have faced during their careers, particularly while pupils. Women also complained of being forced to specialise in family and sex crime cases.

The Legal Services Board has approved radical reforms of the separate business rule for solicitors, while noting that the changes “carry some risks to consumers”. Information on the difference between regulated and unregulated services is to be tested with consumers before the change comes into force.

The Law Society’s membership board has approved plans for a long-term campaign to boost the ‘solicitor brand’, which will include bigger businesses and in-house lawyers as buyers of legal services. It is due to be launched next year.

A former high-flying banker, who worked at Lehman Brothers before the crash, has told Legal Futures how he developed a plan to set up a pioneering alternative business structure while travelling in Vietnam. Zahid Hussein said he wants Z Group to be an integrated one-stop shop for SMEs.

Richard Barnett, former chair of the Law Society’s land law and conveyancing committee, has told Legal Futures that he is “very surprised” at the decision by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) earlier this week that he should be struck off.