Practice Management

Scrapping the minimum salary for trainee solicitors is likely to stimulate more training contracts – but the majority will pay below the current minimum level, a Solicitors Regulation Authority report has concluded. However, the negative impact on diversity is not as clear-cut as critics think.

Law firms’ terms of business need to clearly provide them with adequate rights to stop work for a client who refuses to pay, solicitors have been warned following an important Court of Appeal ruling yesterday.

Applicants for pupillage who are white, male, attended a fee-paying school or Oxbridge, or have parents who are educated to degree level are all more likely to succeed than those without such characteristics, Bar Standards Board research has found.

Professional indemnity insurers will have to disclose their credit ratings to solicitors under plans to be approved by the SRA next month. However, it is to drop the requirement that insurers give policyholders a month’s notice of their intention not to renew cover.

The College of Law is to target expansion of its new undergraduate law degree following its sale to Montague Private Equity. The deal separates the legal education and training business from the college’s charitable activities, with the proceeds of the sale going into a £200m-plus fund.

A former senior solicitor at City firm SNR Denton is facing a £600,000 bill after the High Court ordered her to repay the firm and its insurer losses they suffered as a result of her involvement in the payment of a bribe.

The prospect of trainee solicitors claiming housing benefit and taking on second jobs because the minimum salary has been scrapped “is not the type of image that befits the profession”, the Law Society has claimed.

Prospective trainee solicitors at Reed Smith are to conduct projects for the international firm’s clients as part of an innovative legal practice course that integrates legal and business learning and leads to a unique Masters qualification – the MA (LPC with Business).

The Bar Standards Board is formally to seek the introduction of an aptitude test for prospective Bar professional training course students from this autumn, setting the pass rate at a level that would eliminate the weakest 10% of students.

Regional law firm Mills & Reeve will next month launch a fixed-price online know-how and training package for family lawyers that it claims will enable practitioners to compete in a shrinking market.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to consider retaining the minimum salary for trainee solicitors at the level of the national minimum wage after discovering that without it trainees would be classed as apprentices and so could be paid just £2.60 an hour in their first year – less than £5,000.

The prospect of paying referral fees in personal injury becoming a criminal offence seemingly disappeared last night, while the government defeated a bid to exempt not-for-profits from the ban and outlined its plans to crack down on unsolicited PI marketing.

Innovative legal business Axiom has become the latest to open an operation in Belfast, with £1.6m of government support. Unlike at other law firm operations in the city, the 100 lawyers and paralegals will be the primary client-facing fee-earners for global companies.

Mid-tier law firms are over-engineering their risk management and compliance functions, spending more than both bigger and smaller practices for far less return, new research from Lockton has claimed.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has called upon the ongoing Legal Education and Training Review to propose a revalidation scheme for lawyers. At the same event, delegates were told that judicial evaluation in the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates is flawed.