Charities, faith leaders and human rights experts are calling on new justice secretary Kenneth Clarke (pictured) to save the UK’s largest immigration advice provider, which is facing closure because of delays in receiving legal aid payments.

In an open letter to Clarke and home secretary Theresa May, they warn that thousands of vulnerable people will be left without legal help unless Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) is paid promptly what it is owed. The charity’s closure would leave 10,000 people without a lawyer and delay asylum decisions, they claim.

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Average salaries for newly qualified in-house lawyers in the north-west of England fell from £40,000 to £37,000 last year, a new survey by Manchester recruitment consultancy BCL Legal has revealed.

More experienced in-house lawyers, however, saw their pay remain unchanged at £43,000-£60,000 for one to five years’ post-qualification experience (PQE), rising to £65,000-£100,000 for six to 10 years’ PQE.

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Any prospect of a new ban on referral fees has been dealt a second major blow in the space of a few weeks, as a new report for the Legal Services Board recommended that the fees should be retained last week.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel’s report called for greater disclosure of referral fees and better regulation, but found that the payments do have a place in the legal services market and should be allowed to continue.

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A north-east solicitor yesterday settled his libel claim against the owner of a website that blacklists solicitors and law firms.

Scott Eason, principal at Eason Law, had instructed libel lawyers Carter-Ruck to bring a claim for damages of between £50,000 and £100,000 and obtain a High Court injunction against Rick Kordowski, who runs solicitorsfromhell.co.uk.

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Lawyers must provide clear information to clients about how they can complain about the service they receive, the Legal Services Board said today.

Noting ‘a perception of poor complaints handling by [legal] regulators and the individuals and entities that they regulate,’ the LSB said that firms must make it clear how clients can complain to the firm, and if they are unhappy with the firm’s response, how they can take their complaint to the Legal Ombudsman.

The requirements come into force when the Legal Ombudsman opens in the autumn.

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Identity cards for British citizens are to be scrapped within 100 days, the Home Office announced today.

The National Identity Register, the database containing the biographic and biometric fingerprint data of cardholders, is also to be destroyed.

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Identity cards for British citizens are to be scrapped within 100 days, the Home Office announced today.

The National Identity Register, the database containing the biographic and biometric fingerprint data of cardholders, is also to be destroyed.

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Who? Amjad Malik, 39, immigration and human rights solicitor-advocate at Rochdale law firm Amjad Malik Solicitors.

Why is he in the news? Acted via video link for three Pakistani terror suspects in their appeal against deportation from the UK.

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City firm Denton Wilde Sapte and US firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal are set to merge to create a 1,400-lawyer transatlantic firm.

The merged firm would have combined revenues of around £500m and would span 18 countries.

The firms’ management boards have recommended the merger to partners, who will vote on whether to give the green light on 9 June. Any merger would become effective on 30 September.

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The delaying tactics and ‘excessive demands’ of defendant lawyers in competition actions are hampering cases and draining the resources of competition authorities, the chairman of the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) alleged last week.

Philip Collins told the Law Society competition section’s annual conference that the balance between the rights of defendants and the speed of decision-making might need to be corrected, and hinted that the OFT will become less tolerant of unreasonable requests from defendant lawyers.

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