Market monitor

Listed law firm Gateley yesterday cancelled a dividend payout to ensure its short-term liquidity in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland yesterday praised lawyers for their “heroic efforts” in trying to keep trials going, but said the government was being criticised too harshly.

The Competition and Markets Authority has called for alternative business structures to be allowed in Scotland, and for a shift to the independent regulation of lawyers.

The leader of the North Eastern Circuit has urged his members not to attend any court hearings today in the wake of the government’s decision last night to lock down the UK.

The trial of nine lawyers over an alleged plot to scam £11m from the legal aid system was abandoned last Friday after several counsel withdrew to self-isolate.

A union representing legal workers has expressed “outrage” at the “classist allocation of risk” that is seeing law firm partners working from home while other staff are forced into the office.

Barristers who follow official guidance on Covid-19 will not be in breach of their professional obligations, the BSB has said amid a range of developments in the courts, PI and conveyancing.

Personal injury law firms and insurers look unlikely to have sight of the new rules governing the whiplash portal until May as they were not signed off at this month’s rule committee meeting.

Criminal defence solicitors have called for expedited legal aid payments and an extension of the business rate holiday to law firms with contracts to combat the impact of Covid-19.

North-west law firm Jackson Lees Group is the newest consolidator to hit the market, with a management buy-out the prelude to an aggressive nationwide ‘buy and build’ strategy.