Baker McKenzie and Travers Smith LLP have become the latest law firms to announce increases in pay for their newly qualified (NQ) lawyers. 

The GDL is only the first stepping stone on the way to becoming a lawyer for non-law graduates. 

The Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates is unlawful and intended to undermine the fundamental principles of barristers' independence, the High Court has heard as the judicial review of QASA gets underway.

The Alternative Business Structure model has facilitated two more firsts for the profession with the granting of ABS licences by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to long-standing advocates of the new ownership approach, Knights Solicitors and Quindell Portfolio.

The College of Law and the International Bar Association have teamed up to offer four £2,500 scholarships to students on the CoL's LLM in international legal practice, which runs from September 2012.

Commerciality remains top of many recruiters’ list of ideal traits for their future trainees - where better to develop that skill than with a small collection of topical business news stories, designed to help you to start thinking like a lawyer.

Cameron and Carney were full of literary flourish this week, with metaphors that drew parallels with dashboards and apple barrels.

Commerciality and business nous: these are prized skills among lawyers and exactly the kind of thing that recruiters are looking for their trainees to possess.

Trainee and newly qualified solicitors think that firms should do more to provide training and support on stress at work, a survey by the Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) has revealed.  

In addition to legal knowledge, firms expect their lawyers to have commerciality and business nous – a failure to do so leaves clients unhappy and deals undone.

The first charity in the UK to provide legal aid to the social care sector has been launched in partnership with leading City law firms.

The Law Society has published its Annual Statistical Report for 2013, which has confirmed that the number of training contracts on offer has increased up to 5,302 following the decline of previous years.

Former competition lawyer Mia Forbes Pirie has been named UK Independent Mediator 2021 by Corporate International.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has approved alternative business structure licences for the AA and over-50s specialist Saga.

CILEx president Nick Hanning has urged Justice Secretary Chris Grayling to make further concessions to his controversial plans to change legal aid, following a partial U-turn on the government’s proposal to deny legal aid recipients the right to choose a lawyer.

A US law firm which only acts for companies in the cannabis industry is set to launch a UK office, in a move which is bound to put some anti-marijuana campaigners’ noses out of joint.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has called for itself to be made fully independent from the Law Society as part of the governance review being carried out by the legal profession’s super-regulator, the Legal Services Board.  

The SRA will be making unannounced visits to 100 "randomly selected" law firms in order to assess their compliance with diversity reporting requirements, it was announced at the Law Society Firms Diversity Forum meeting in September.

The second Law Society free public debate of 2012 will focus on intellectual property and ambush marketing, which are both hot topics this year as a result of the European football championships (Euro 2012) and the impending London Olympic Games.