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The legal services sector is to shed 13,000 jobs in the decade to 2027 – with a further 22,000 at risk if technology brings radical change to the workforce, research for the Law Society has predicted.

A law firm made an unlawful deduction of wages when it took £1,700 from the salary of a sacked solicitor turned office manager to cover the cost of a training course, an employment judge has ruled.

The combination of the new Standards and Regulations and the Solicitors Qualifying Exam “will drastically increase the supply of lawyers”, the European head of Rocket Lawyer has predicted.

An online-only law school entered the market yesterday to deliver the new Solicitors Qualifying Examination, with heavyweight backing from leading academics and lawyers.

The pre-1992 universities achieve the best results in the centralised exams taken by students on the Bar Professional Training Course, it has emerged.

Half of the judges in England and Wales will be women in fewer than 14 years, Lady Hale predicted this weekend, suggesting that Lord Sumption was wrong to says gender parity would take 50 years.

One of the barrister founders of a pioneering legal aid firm in the North-East was not an employee or worker and so cannot bring unfair dismissal and other claims, an employment tribunal has ruled.

A leading personal injury lawyer has described how working for a “posh law firm” while not having gone to university felt like “a terrible stigma”.

Sixteen-year-olds have been invited to compete in a competition aimed at educating them about the work of a solicitor and testing their aptitude, with the winner receiving financial support to become one.

Approval of the Solicitors Qualifying Exam is not a foregone conclusion, the Legal Services Board is to make clear to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Issues such as quality and cost must be addressed.

Law schools are not taking advantage of the “enormous regulatory freedom” they have and instead are largely all offering the same kind of law degree, new research has found.

A legal secretary who claimed she felt humiliated and insulted by a colleague commenting on her 50th birthday has lost her claim for harassment and age discrimination against the law firm.

Transferring the ownership of law firms to employee ownership trusts (EOTs) boosts staff loyalty by giving them more security if the firm is sold, the chief executive of the latest firm to create an EOT has said.

Apprenticeships offer significant benefits to both young people and their employers, allowing law firms to plan their staffing several years in advance, a conference heard last week.

The profession needs to keep working to address unconscious bias, as “we have not yet reached the stage where a successful woman is accepted as the norm”, Dame Heather Hallett said last week.