The College of Law has been granted full university status and will now be rebranded as the University of Law.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel, the law watchdog, has claimed in its submission to the Legal Education and Training Review that legal training is failing because it is too generalised.

Chartered legal executives have become the first UK legal professionals to recite an oath upon qualification.

Just an idea, but we would gently suggest that you intersperse the late-morning starts and excessive consumption that characterises the Easter weekend with looking at some of the past week’s most interesting commercial news stories.

Law undergraduates should apply from September onwards in their final year, while non-law graduates should do so from September onwards in their GDL year.

For the first time in history, the most senior judge in England and Wales will be a woman.  

LGBT rights charity Stonewall has named nine City law firms as top employers for their commitment to employment equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans staff. The law firms make up more than half of the total shortlist, which named 17 organisations in total.

The Lawyers with Disabilities Division is running an event on "Disability and employment" on Tuesday 18 March, designed to offer attendees an insight into what working life as a disabled lawyer is really like and more general careers advice.

Metro Bank is offering a professional studies loan for legal studies exclusively to students at the University of Law, which is now open for applications.

Following on from publication last week of the Lammy Report on racial bias in the British criminal justice system, the chair of the Bar Council’s Equality and Diversity and Social Mobility Committee has responded by saying that report makes an important contribution to the “urgent task of securing a fair and equal criminal justice system”.

The first Skype-style video conferencing kiosk, which allows users to speak with solicitors and receive legal advice remotely, has been introduced at Queensgate shopping centre in Peterborough.

Another week, another opportunity to learn more about the commercial world and its impact on us all – including lawyers! Enjoy our digest of stories from the past week.

Ministry of Justice findings have revealed that court backlogs reached a record high of 74,651 cases at the end of 2024, with an 11% increase in backlogs between December 2023 and 2024 alone.

The consensus that the government’s legal aid cuts are a false economy has been further strengthened by new research released by Ipsos MORI.

More than a third of law firms in England and Wales are now majority-owned by women, showing continuing progress toward gender equality in the legal profession, the Law Society has said in marking this International Women’s Day.

For the first time, juries will be allowed to hear cases remotely in England and Wales due to the rising backlog of trials. 

Top law firms have announced their autumn retention rates, following the lead of Shearman & Sterling which revealed in June that it would keep on 11 of its 12 NQs.

Thirteen City firms have launched the ‘Noticed toolkit’, alongside inter-firm diversity network Noticed, to tackle racism.