Market monitor

The outlook for creditors of failed personal injury firm Roberts Jackson is bleak, with nearly £40m that it owes, more than half to its private equity backer, unlikely to be repaid.

Conveyancers, estate agents and others involved in the home-moving process can return to work today in line with social distancing advice, the government announced last night.

A jury trial resumed at the Old Bailey yesterday, with barristers in the jury and press boxes, and jurors socially distancing in counsel’s rows after being told there were no face masks for them.

A fund worth more than £5m to sustain UK social justice advisers through the Covid-19 pandemic – and as a “catalyst for wider renewal” – has gone live today.

Reduced billing by law firms in April was covered by a parallel fall in costs and arrival of government money, but the lack of new work is going to hurt them badly, according to new research.

Lawyers should take a “climate-conscious approach” to legal practice and advise clients of the risks of worsening the climate crisis, the International Bar Association has declared

A group of female entrepreneurs in the legal market has told general counsel that they have to support female-run start-up businesses if they are to survive the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Many of the country’s largest law firms are unprepared for the rate at which they are burning through cash during the Covid-19 pandemic, a review of their accounts has revealed.

The courts and tribunals in England and Wales are now conducting almost half as many civil and criminal hearings as they did before the coronavirus crisis, a justice minister said yesterday.

The government has announced a £5.4m cash injection for law centres and other advice charities to help people with housing, debt, discrimination and employment problems during the Covid-19 crisis.

The coronavirus crisis has not stopped a series of mergers taking place across the country in recent weeks, as well as specialist law firms starting up.

The government is considering whether children in police stations should have to opt out of receiving legal advice, rather than opt in as now, it has emerged.

Nearly three-quarters of small law firms believe they may have to close their doors in the next six months as result of the coronavirus crisis, Law Society research has found.

Former Lord Chancellor David Gauke, who lost his seat at December’s general election, has returned to his old firm Macfarlanes as head of public policy.

Hull-based Hudgell Solicitors has begun work on trying to overturn as many as 500 potentially unsafe convictions as a result of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal.