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A leading supplier of outsourced employment law services to thousands of businesses has itself been found to have unfairly dismissed three legal staff after failing to follow proper redundancy procedures.

Lesbian, gay and bisexual lawyers and staff could be inadvertently “outed” as a result of the Legal Services Board’s plans to increase diversity in the workplace, leading campaign group Stonewall has warned. The charity strongly supported monitoring the sexual orientation of staff but said the board needs to find another way of doing it.

A former Court of Appeal judge and the one-time senior partner of City law firm Simmons & Simmons have been appointed joint chairs of a new consultation panel to advise on the fundamental education and training review – now known as “Review 2020″.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has announced the first research into continuing professional development in the legal profession for a quarter of a century. As first reported by Legal Futures in February, it has appointed Professor Andrew Boon of Westminster University to conduct the research.

The Bar Standards Board last night delayed the introduction of an aptitude test for asprising bar students – which it had hoped to do this year – by 12 months. The test assesses analytical and critical reasoning, and fluency in the English language.

The children of clients are given informal work experience at large commercial law firms “as part of business development”, the first ever research into the subject has found. Students who have had informal work experience while at school have an advantage in pursuing a legal career, but a lack of “social capital” means others are denied access to such opportunities.

Widespread doubts exist among barristers over aspects of the Bar Standards Board’s equality and diversity reforms, it emerged last week at a consultation event on proposed code of conduct rule changes, where concerns were raised over details of proposed monitoring requirements.

Three magic circle law firms are among the first to back an online initiative aimed at helping underprivileged youngsters break into the professions. Allen & Overy, Slaughter and May and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer have signed up to accessprofessions.com, a charity website which connects students aged between 13 and 21 with career-enhancing opportunities.

The College of Law is to enter the undergraduate degree market for the first time by launching a two-year LL.B that it says will prepare students for legal practice. Students will be able to choose a degree that focuses on legal issues for individuals or one aimed at business law.

Partners in law firms that receive external investment after October will alienate younger colleagues if they appear to be stripping the firm of value for future generations, a report has warned.

Some of the UK’s leading legal brains – including Professor Richard Susskind and Legal Services Board chief executive Chris Kenny – are teaming up with six law schools in England, the US and China to launch a groundbreaking international legal education project in London this weekend. LawWithoutWalls claims to be the first global venture designed to tackle the problems facing legal education and practice by bridging law schools, students, legal and business professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Three-quarters of lawyers who sought help with health problems last year complained of stress, support charity LawCare has reported, while warning that drug abuse in the profession is worse than its statistics indicate. LawCare opened 517 new case files in 2010, down from a record 549 in 2009, splitting 60/40 between women and men.

A spiralling number of partnership disputes is encouraging the development of specialist alternative dispute resolution, experts have said. It has led to the Association of Partnership Practitioners launching a Directory of Partnership Dispute Arbitrators and Mediators.

In the wake of the recent ruling that a fixed-share partner is a partner, not an employee, Mark Briegal of Legal Futures Associate Ralli looks at the advantages to both law firm and lawyer of a fixed share over a salary

Some elite London law firms are passing over well-qualified, white working-class job applicants in favour of middle-class graduates from elite universities who they think they are better for their image, new research says. The firms studied had successfully recruited ethnic minority candidates as part of diversity programmes, but rejected able working-class students because their appearance or accent was not thought “smart” enough.