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”).

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 introduction of the Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) should be delayed, according to leading law academics, because continuing uncertainty around the new system is making it impossible for students to make informed decisions about the choices available to them.

BPP University Law School has won the coveted Leadership Award at the UK Social Mobility Awards 2023. Focusing on advancing social mobility and recognising employers that are working to improve it, the awards are run by London-based societal change charity Making The Leap, with the ceremony taking place on 12 October 2023.

As you’ll learn, being a good lawyer is so much more than advising on legal technicalities – it is understanding and absorbing what drives your client and then helping them with practical solutions that resonate with their unique set of business concerns and constraints. Want to know what some of those things might be? Read on.

Phew, it’s fair to say that it’s been another unprecedented week in British politics, and it looks like this unpredictability and chaos will continue until 31 October, and undoubtedly well beyond.

A total of 738 legal professionals sought support from LawCare in 2020, rising 9% on 2019’s figure, according to the mental health charity’s 2020 Impact Report.

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.

For the second year in a row, Browne Jacobson LLP has secured the top spot on the UK’s Social Mobility Index.  

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.

Students from the Queen Elizabeth Academy in Crediton have won the final of the Bar National Mock Trial Competition on 24 March, in the annual competition’s 21st year.

Environmental Law Foundation (ELF) runs a number of pro bono university clinics throughout the country, which are supervised by local ELF professional members.

Holman Fenwick Willan has launched a Global Lawyers Challenge, the prize for which is a full day at HFW's Paris, Athens or Geneva office over the course of a two-night stay.