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The Solicitors Regulation Authority could “mystery shop” conveyancing firms to check whether their costs information and publicity about charges are misleading, it has revealed. At the same time, the Legal Services Board announced that it is to consider a major review of conveyancing.

The Legal Services Board has an “absolute right” to intervene whenever it believes frontline regulators are dragging their heels, such as acting to improve diversity, the Legal Services Board chairman, David Edmonds, told the Legal Futures conference.

I don’t know if I’m one of the last people in the legal world to notice this, but the Ministry of Justice has made it quietly but abundantly clear that it will not be banning referral fees any time soon.

We all know where the Bar stands on referral fees – both the Bar Council and Bar Standards Board (BSB) strongly oppose their existence and have not been slow to express their views publicly. At last week’s meeting of the BSB’s full board, there seemed amazement that anyone could support them. Certainly the BSB’s response to the Legal Services Board’s consultation on referral fees has moved the rhetoric up a notch.

Personal injury claims and other low-value legal matters should be “delawyered” to some degree, former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer has argued. The peer, who was the architect of the Legal Services Act, said alternative business structures would help in this process. Welcoming the “commoditisation” of personal injury work, he said it is “fundamentally a good thing that the market should only be charged what the service requires”.