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The legal profession is poised on the brink of an employment revolution that will unleash a “pent-up productivity” which will bring it into line with other industries, a report has claimed.

More than 6,000 law firms have yet to submit their workforce diversity data to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the regulator warned yesterday. They now have less than three weeks until the 31 January deadline for reporting the data collected from partners and staff.

Almost one in five lawyers complaining of stress are being bullied in the workplace, according to the latest statistics from the legal support charity LawCare, which also showed a large year-on-year increase in callers overall.

The Law Society has delayed the launch of its paralegal accreditation scheme, Legal Futures has learned. The scheme – aimed at non-qualified staff working in organisations regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority – was scheduled to go live in autumn 2013.

Much of the red tape around the training of solicitors would be swept away if proposals before the Solicitors Regulation Authority are adopted, including abandoning a ceiling on the number of trainees firms are allowed to take on.

The senior management of the Law Society does not reflect the diversity profile of the rest of the organisation, new figures have shown. It comes at the time every law firm and chambers in England and Wales has to report the make-up of their organisation to their regulator.

The growing mismatch between the opportunities to study law and the number of legal jobs makes it “very hard” to encourage young people to seek a legal career, the deputy president of the Supreme Court has warned.

A University of Exeter project is teaching first year law undergraduates about alternative business structures, in what the academic tutor says is meeting outcomes recommended by the Legal Education and Training Review.

The ex-City lawyer chairman of the Solicitors Regulation Authority has questioned the recruitment methods of City law firms in making university students decide to become commercial lawyers so early on in their legal careers.

Legal regulators should in future rate the risk that firms present to the public on the basis of the diversity of their workforce, and focus supervision on those with the worst records, according to a report.

Would-be solicitors may be able to design their own routes to qualification – which need not involve a degree, legal practice course or training contract – under a blueprint for radical reform of education and training published today by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Alternative business structure NewLaw Solicitors is to grow by 25% after receiving finance from the Welsh government to help it expand. The firm is to recruit 86 people in its Cardiff headquarters.

The Bar Standards Board has become the first frontline regulator to map out how it will take forward the Legal Education & Training Review (LETR). Earlier this week the BSB and Solicitors Regulation Authority were criticised for not collaborating on taking forward the LETR.

The Legal Services Board is to issue statute-backed guidelines to compel legal regulators to follow its vision of how reforms resulting from the Legal Education and Training Review should be implemented.

Riverview Law, the fixed-priced commercial law business, is to double in size by creating up to 100 new posts over the next year, it announced today. The firm said the appointments are a result of “recent contract wins with a number of FTSE 100 businesses”.