BBC executives have accused Sir Cliff Richard of spending “grossly unreasonable” amounts on lawyers after the singer began legal action over their reports naming him as a suspected sex offender.

They say that the pop star has already run up legal costs of more than £500,000 which are on “on any view disproportionate”. Lawyers representing the BBC made the criticism during a High Court hearing in London on Thursday. The singer is seeking damages over the news reports and BBC editors have said they will ‘’defend ourselves vigorously’’ against the claim.

Detail of Sir Cliff’s claim emerged last year in papers lodged at the High Court by his lawyers. Mr Justice Mann is overseeing the latest in a series of preliminary hearings in London, which Sir Cliff did not attend. It is scheduled to end today.

“The claimant’s budget shows pre-action costs of £525,437, including 1,287 hours of solicitors’ time,” Gavin Millar, QC, of Matrix Chambers in Gray’s Inn, who heads the BBC’s legal team, told the judge in a written submission. “Though not without its legal complexities, this case cannot have required extensive factual investigations on behalf of the claimant: the broadcasts are in the public domain,” Millar said. “On any view ... the claimant’s incurred costs to date are grossly unreasonable and disproportionate.”

Millar said that the judge should record “strong disapproval”. If Sir Cliff’s claim succeeds, and he wins damages, the BBC could be ordered to pick up all his lawyers’ bills.

Gideon Benaim, a partner at the London law firm Simkins, acts for Sir Cliff. He and the firm declined to comment. However, a spokesman for the singer said: “Sir Cliff Richard incurred these costs and expenses over more than a two year period, we say as a direct result of the actions of South Yorkshire Police and the BBC. Ultimately it will be down to a judge to decide whether or not he should recover such costs and expenses in full or in part, or at all.”

Family lawyers have urged politicians to allow divorce without blame.The main political parties are urged today to commit to a reform of divorce laws including bringing in no-fault divorce.

Resolution, an association of family lawyers with 6,500 members, said it should be included in a wider reform of divorce laws. In a letter to the major parties Nigel Shepherd, the association’s chairman, said that introducing no-fault divorce, giving cohabiting couples basic legal rights, improving access to the family justice system and giving more financial clarity on divorce would “make a huge, positive difference to the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people that separate each year”.

In his letter, Shepherd said that “current divorce law does not encourage couples to divorce amicably” and that “people often have to cite unreasonable behaviour or adultery on the divorce petition”. Resolution claims this situation leads to unnecessary conflict, makes an amicable separation less likely, and reduces the chances of reaching agreement on children and financial issues.

Shepherd proposed that the law be changed to allow for divorces to be “finalised where one or both of the parties to a marriage give notice that their marriage has broken down irretrievably and one or both of them are still of that view after six months”.

A sacked police officer has gone to the country’s highest court to challenge police misconduct panels’ long held position that they cannot be sued.

The police officer alleges that a panel acted unlawfully by discriminating against her on the ground of disability when it dismissed her after an altercation. The officer – known only as P – admitted that she had been drunk at the time of the incident in 2011 but said that her behaviour resulted from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by an assault she had suffered the previous year.

The employment tribunal and its appeal tribunal both dismissed the police officer’s claim, ruling that the police misconduct panel was a judicial body that enjoyed immunity from suit.

The case’s two-day hearing at the Supreme Court in London closed yesterday. Equality campaigners have rallied round P’s case, claiming that more than 100,000 ethnic minority professionals could be affected by the ruling. They argue that professional disciplinary bodies have free reign to hand down decisions that could discriminate, while claiming immunity from suit.

A coalition of groups, including the Society of Black Lawyers, the Association of Muslim Lawyers and the National Black Police Association, have been granted leave to intervene in the appeal before the Supreme Court.

Lady Hale, vice-president of the court, is leading the bench for the hearing, which also includes Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore, Lord Wilson of Culworth, Lord Reed and Lord Hughes. A judgment is expected in September.

City of London law firms accounted for nearly a fifth of The Times’s league table of the best employers for gender diversity, joining a mix that included MI5 and the British army.

Nine legal practices featured in the top 50 list, including CMS, the Square Mile firm involved in a controversial tripartite merger that launched earlier this week. The other eight law firms to make the top tier were Addleshaw Goddard, Ashurst, Eversheds Sutherland, also the product of a recent merger, Herbert Smith Freehills, Hogan Lovells, Linklaters, Norton Rose Fulbright and Pinsent Mason.

Linklaters was the only member of the elite group five “magic circle” law firms to feature on the list, which also included all of the “big four” accountancy practices and the renowned international consultancy business McKinsey & Co.

Ashurst was singled out for the “game changer” award for its revised work allocation programme. The scheme removes decision-making regarding the assigning of files to junior lawyers from senior partners so that personal favouritism cannot play a role.

Eversheds has retained its place at the top of the list of “strongest” UK legal profession brands, despite having partially changed its name after a transatlantic merger earlier this year.

The firm – which is now Eversheds Sutherland after tying the knot in with a Washington DC firm in February -- has finished top of the brand awareness list for three years on the trot. “Eversheds Sutherland has received extra attention since the announcement of its US merger, now offering a sizeable presence in the largest and most important legal market in the world,” explained Lisa Hart Shepherd, the chief executive of Acritas, the brand consultancy that runs the annual survey.

Pinsent Masons, another City of London firm, took second place, jumping over another transatlantic firm, DLA Piper, which this year came third. Rounding out the top five in the brand strength table were two Square Mile “magic circle” practices – Slaughter and May and Linklaters. They were followed by two more of the magic five: Clifford Chance and Allen & Overy.

The final magic circle player, the Anglo-German law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, trailed well behind in twelfth position, but still one place above CMS, which has just completed one of the City’s most ambitious mergers.

Alleged Islamic State atrocities allegedly perpetrated against the Yazidis in Iraq could legally constitute genocide, human rights researchers have said.

Isis fighters are alleged to have trapped up to 50,000 people on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq, close to the Syria border, in 2014. Analysts maintain that thousands died through hunger and dehydration before armed forces from a coalition of western countries began aid drops and an air campaign against the jihadis. The military action eventually allowed the Yazidis to escape.

Research published in the Human Rights Law Review yesterday claimed to provide “strong evidence” to support a prosecution for genocide against IS. “In view of the limitations of our sources and, in particular, the lack of access to information on individual perpetrators, we have not been able to reach a view on whether individuals had the specific intent necessary to commit the crime of genocide,” said Aldo Zammit Borda, a senior lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University and one of the report’s authors.

“However, we have uncovered a pattern of conduct which may be seen as indicative of the existence of a genocidal plan on the part of ISIL, as a body, against the Yazidis.”

Last year, the US House of Representatives and the secretary of state at the time, John Kerry, described Isis’s actions against the Yazidis as well as other religious and ethnic minorities as genocide.

Defence Secretary ‘pressured regulators to charge law firm accused of pursuing false claims that British troops murdered Iraqi civilians' – Daily Mail

Google reaches $334m tax settlement in Italy – Wall Street Journal

Bristol University law student is sixth to die in similar circumstances this academic year – The Sun