On Saturday 25 February the first CityLawLIVE student conference was held in London, bringing together around 160 students keen on a career in the City with firm representatives and industry experts.

The Bar Council has warned that the government's plans to introduce competitive tendering for legal aid contracts and deny defendants the right to choose a lawyer will undermine the UK justice system's good reputation among the international community.

A host of firms have revealed their autumn trainee retention figures – meaning the number of trainees who secure permanent positions at the firm once they qualify as solicitors. 

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) will take a ‘tougher stance’ on chambers that fail to disclose how they calculate their fees.

Plans by the government to extend the hours at which courts are open to as late as 8:30pm have been met with resistance from across the legal profession.

The business world is waiting for important news from the Bank of England, which later today is expected to raise interest rates for only the second time in a decade. Investors are betting that the Bank’s monetary policy committee will increase rates from 0.5% to 0.75%, which would reap benefits for savers and affect millions of loans and mortgages.

A barrister has called for the Inns of Court to do more to promote social mobility after Lincoln’s Inn quoted £3,000 for hosting an event about diversity in the legal profession.

The Co-operative Group's announcement of its intentions to create 3,000 jobs in the legal sector is the latest and clearest sign that alternative business structures are set to have a big impact on the legal profession.

The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEX) has opened the final stage of the CILEX Professional Qualification (CPQ) to allow Legal Practice Course (LPC) and Bar course graduates to qualify as CILEX lawyers. 

The big news this week is yesterday’s budget – the BBC provides a useful outline of the key points, which include the removal of stamp duty for first-time buyers on properties up to £300,000; £1.5 billion to be devoted to addressing universal credit concerns; and new measures to crackdown on tech giants which route their profits through low-tax countries (otherwise known as the “Google tax”).

Students on Manchester Metropolitan University's BTPC course and police trainees recently took part in a full-scale mock trial, offering both sets of aspiring professionals the taste of their career future.

Any government decision to impose further increases to civil court fees would result in far more money lost in tax revenues generated by legal work than would be raised by court fees, according to City solicitors and barristers. 

Lady Chief Justice of England and Wales, Baroness Carr, is “really interested” in filming more trials in a wider range of courts to “promote open justice”.

The Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) will have a negative impact on students and academics, and represents a “step backwards” for diversity and equal access to careers in the legal profession, according to law lecturers.

The University of Law has received a new “gold” rating in the new government-led Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The TEF panel judged that the institution “delivers consistently outstanding teaching, learning and outcomes for its students. It is of the highest quality found in the United Kingdom.”

CityLawLIVE and NationalLawLIVE, LCN’s one-day student conferences for aspiring solicitors, have announced that they are jointly extending their deadline to Sunday 5 November. Giving applicants an additional week in which to submit will hopefully attract those students who may not have had the time to get their applications in for consideration.