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The government has rejected a call from the legal profession that partners in alternative business structures should have to disclose all convictions and cautions, even if spent. But the SRA is still on track to start licensing ABSs in early 2012.

The controversial Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) will now go live in April 2012, it emerged last week. We can also reveal that contingency plans have been drawn up for the judiciary not playing its expected role in QASA.

Amid the excitement of ABSs going live, in a small way, and the Legal Ombudsman’s first birthday, I have been keeping an eye on the third limb of the Legal Services Board’s initial three priorities for its first three years – ensuring the independence of regulation within those approved regulators where there is also a representative function. With both the Law Society and Bar Council still non-compliant with its rules, it is not a story that reflects very well on the LSB.

Complaints against barristers by litigants-in-person (LiPs) forced by legal aid cuts to represent themselves have continued to spike, according to the Bar Standards Board. It has received as many complaints from LiPs in the first half of 2011 as it did in 2009 and 2010 combined.

The controversial Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates may now be subject to a full pilot, it has emerged, at the same time as criminal barristers are up in arms at Legal Services Commission plans to use the scheme to end payments for QCs, which they say threatens its whole future.