Solicitors specialising in residential property transactions were some of the queasiest on June 24 as the EU referendum result rolled in, convinced as they were that Brexit would trigger a housing market crash.

But figures released this week suggest the crash has yet to materialise and that whatever Brexit means, other factors are keeping the residential conveyancing market booming.

Conveyancing transactions rose by a healthy 24 per cent in the second quarter of this year, according to a report from Search Acumen, which monitors the sector. Researchers attributed the rise to reforms to stamp duty and land tax. From the beginning of April, the government levied a stamp duty surcharge on second homes, a move that appears to have triggered a rush to buy before the deadline.

Whatever is causing the boom, conveyancing law firms are benefiting, say the researchers. Firms at the top of the market completed more than 3,500 transactions during the quarter. That was a rise of 17 per cent over the first quarter of this year. More impressively, the most recent transaction rate was more than 40 per cent above last year’s second-quarter rate.

The report pointed to a slight rise over the last year in the number of solicitors’ practices offering residential conveyancing services – up from 4,177 to 4,281.

Law firms must not be forced into a “meaningless exercise” of having to publish the average cost of their services, the solicitors’ professional body says.

The Law Society of England and Wales has rejected proposals that the profession’s regulator should step in to force them to disclose their costs. Instead, it says that market solutions are a better tool to improve competition and ensure clients can make informed choices when purchasing legal services.

The comments come in response to the Legal Services Consumer Panel, the body set up by the profession’s umbrella regulator, the Legal Services Board, which argues that regulatory intervention is needed to ensure information about average fees is published.

Both the panel and the Competition and Markets Authority are backing regulatory changes to force firms to reveal more information about their fees and quality of service. But Catherine Dixon, the Law Society’s chief executive, criticised the proposals as being “misconceived”. Dixon said “a narrow focus on price – especially average price, which could be particularly misleading – is potentially damaging to clients’ ability to make informed choices.”

The society maintains that publishing average prices in areas of work where there are multiple variables affecting the costs “would be confusing and in many cases meaningless”. According to Dixon, the society agreed that “the market will benefit from the provision of more useful information on both price and service quality. This should include clarity about the protections available to the clients of regulated firms that are not available to those who engage unregulated providers.

“We are confident that the legal services market, which is very competitive, will deliver ever more beneficial and durable improvements than further regulation, which would also create the risk of unintended consequences.”

In a separate response earlier this month to the CMA’s interim report on the legal services market, the society says it supports the objective of ensuring useful information is provided for consumers – but “we believe that market-driven solutions can and will plug the transparency of information gap”.

The wheels of justice grind notoriously slowly but some delays are too much even by the standards of the judicial system.

A high court judge has been censured by the lord chief justice and lord chancellor for delaying giving a judgment. No details have been given but it is likely that the delay by Mr Justice Timothy King will have run to several months and possibly up to a year.

The Judicial Conduct Investigations Office said that heads of the judiciary had concluded after an investigation that the judge’s behaviour had fallen “below the standards expected of a member of the judiciary”. A spokesman said in a statement that the judge had been issued with a reprimand. The statement gave no detail about the case.

The judge is a repeat offender when it comes to slowness in giving judgment: in 2013 he was given a similar reprimand by the judicial complaints office, which – after an investigation – found “unacceptable delay” in handing down a judgment.

Mr Justice King was appointed a high court judge in the Queen’s Bench Division, succeeding Mr Justice Toulson, who became chairman of the Law Commission, in 2006. He was previously a member of Byrom Street Chambers, in Manchester.

Britain’s biggest ever US-style class action lawsuit will pit one of London’s magic circle law firms against a thrusting litigation specialist upstart from California.

MasterCard, the international credit card company, is understood to be instructing Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to defend one of the first claims brought under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

The claim is being fronted by Walter Merricks, the former chief financial services ombudsman, who represents a class of UK consumers that alleges to have suffered loss when MasterCard was found to have infringed EU law by imposing excessive charges on the use of its debit and credit cards.

Acting for the claimants is the London office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, the Los Angeles law firm that has shaken up the Square Mile litigation scene.

The Lawyer magazine reported that despite having a history of instructing another US firm in London – Jones Day – MasterCard had passed the defence in the class action to Jon Lawrence, a competition law partner at Freshfields. According to the magazine, the move followed a tender process earlier this month.

The development came a day after the magazine revealed that Quinn Emanuel had “overshot” the value of the claim by £5 billion. The claim is now understood to be valued at £14 billion.

Theresa May, the still relatively new prime minister, might hope to bask a bit longer in a honeymoon glow at Downing Street – but a senior judge in Scotland reckons it’s time to remove the kid gloves.

Lord Boyd of Duncansby, a former lord advocate – Scotland’s attorney general – has lambasted the former home secretary for having “acted unreasonably” in dismissing an application for asylum from a Sri Lankan exile.

It is claimed that the unnamed Tamil dissident was in danger of being tortured if returned to Sri Lanka. The Herald newspaper reported that Boyd, now sitting as a judge hearing a judicial review of the case, said May had been “too ready to dismiss” evidence relating to the threat the asylum seeker allegedly faced in Sri Lanka.

According to the newspaper, the judge said: “If taken together at face value, in my opinion, there was evidence from which the secretary of state could conclude that there is a realistic prospect of success before an immigration judge.”

The Independent Inquiry into child sexual abuse is seeking views on the effectiveness of the criminal compensation and the civil justice systems for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse in England and Wales.

It has published two consultation papers seeking views from individuals and organisations by the end of September.

The move comes after the embarrassing abrupt resignation earlier this month of Dame Lowell Goddard, a New Zealand judge – the third person to step down after being appointed to chair the inquiry.

Her departure came on the day that The Times reported that she had "spent three months on holiday or abroad during her first year in the job", while receiving a pay and benefits package worth £500,000. Professor Alexis Jay, a child protection expert who was a member of the inquiry panel, has been appointed to take her place.

The consultation papers are part of the inquiry’s investigation into accountability and reparation. They consider the extent to which existing support services and legal processes effectively deliver just outcomes to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse where there has been an institutional failure. The closing date is September 29.

Solicitor agrees settlement over abusive language – Law Gazette

Schillings tells lawyers to “come in two days a week” in agile working push – The Lawyer

Mozilla seeks changes to EU copyright law – The Inquirer

New law to stop Britons using India 'baby factories' – London Evening Standard

Five women on how to climb the ‘big law’ ladder – Bloomberg