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Stobart Barristers – the most controversial new business of the Legal Services Act era to date – will no longer provide legal advice to the public, Legal Futures can reveal.

Many criminal law firms will have to merge, or enter into joint ventures, or form alternative business structures, to survive, after the government announced yesterday that it would push ahead with legal aid reforms that are predicated on market consolidation.

The government was yesterday urged to take a ‘no holds barred’ approach to obtaining support and funds for overhauling social welfare legal support, including pro bono help from law students and cash from interest on solicitors’ client accounts.

After what seems an all too brief season of peace and goodwill, hostilities between the government and criminal lawyers have rapidly resumed, and appear to have taken a more sinister turn. With a strike by criminal barristers across England and Wales looming, the Ministry of Justice chose the first working day of 2014 for a not-so-subtle pre-emptive ‘strike’ of its own by releasing figures detailing the earnings of criminal barristers in 2012/2013.

The academic who earlier this year angered criminal defence practitioners when he revealed research suggesting the firms he shadowed had mistreated their clients, has warned that the legal aid cuts planned by the Ministry of Justice will only make things worse.