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Major changes to the way law firms hold client money, including not retaining interest and restricting the collection of fees in advance, were proposed yesterday by the SRA.

There are “reasons to be cautious” around the Solicitors Regulation Authority becoming more involved when law firms go through mergers and acquisitions, it said yesterday.

The 50/50 split between individual solicitors and firms in their funding of the SRA Compensation Fund should be changed to 70/30, the regulator has recommended.

The first round of the diesel emissions litigation went to the claimants yesterday, with the High Court rejecting Mercedes’ bid to bind the court to decisions made by the German car regulator.

The leading figure on legal ethics in the UK has called for the creation of an independent commission charged with improving “honesty, integrity and effectiveness in the use of law”.

A direct access barrister who impermissibly held a divorce client’s money and then did not pay all of it back has been suspended for 18 months by a disciplinary tribunal.

The Financial Conduct Authority is to ask the Supreme Court to make a quick decision on whether it will hear the appeal against the recent decision on car finance mis-selling.

Barristers are wrongly stating that their work is covered by the money laundering regulations in their annual declarations to the Bar Standards Board, it has emerged.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has issued fines totalling £57,000 to eight more law firms for failures in their anti-money laundering controls.

A judge has condemned a solicitor for “the worst example of tampering with a file of papers that I have ever encountered” in reducing a bill claimed at nearly £260,000 to zero.