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The Law Society is considering whether any law firm which recruits trainee solicitors should have to undergo mandatory training in equality and diversity, Legal Futures can report. It may also work with the largest City law firms to help them recruit more black and minority ethnic lawyers.

Criminal law barristers have reached a new low of despondency, the chairman of the Bar Council has told Lord Chancellor Ken Clarke. Peter Lodder QC warned that the government’s legal aid cuts could also see the Bar return to “a professional enclave for the better-off” as students are discouraged by mounting debts.

Our regular round-up of news snippets it’s worth knowing about include a new leading of firms advising AIM businesses, a clean-up operation by the Society of Will Writers, and a survey showing fragile confidence among professionals about the future and the steps they are taking to steady their businesses.

The Legal Services Board looks set to force legal practices to gather and publish equality and diversity data, despite concern that the policy could provoke non-compliance and create a false view of the profession because of relcutance to disclose sensitive information such as sexual orientation or religious belief.

The Legal Services Board (LSB), Law Society and Bar Council have thrown their weight behind a best practice code aimed at stamping out bias in granting internships and improving social mobility for disadvantaged students. Meanwhile, LSB chairman David Edmonds has criticised the idea of restricting access to training to deal with the oversupply of bar students.