* The London legal aid firm Hickman & Rose has given up legal aid - the clearest indication, if one was needed, of how things are going for lawyers toiling in the publicly funded sector. Its legal aid branch is going over to join TV Edwards. Partners at Hickman & Rose have put the surprise decision down to massive cuts in legal aid rates. Ben Rose, one of the founding partners, said: "It's not possible to offer a volume service at the standard we want for clients within this financial framework. We believe that TV Edwards has the drive and dynamism to offer the best possible service within the legal aid framework." The firm will continue to do complex criminal and civil legal aid work from its Clerkenwell office.

* Monday, September 29 sees a timely debate as part of the Temple Festival lecture series: the topic of law and business could not be better chosen. Four key speakers will look at the culpability of the legal system and debate to what extent the law hindered or contributed to the recent economic meltdown. The panellists are Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers - now in his last days as Lord Chief Justice; Lord Browne of Madingley, former chief executive of BP; Sir Andrew Large, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England; and Jan Paulsson, the renowned commercial arbitrator. In the chair is Stephanie Flanders, economics editor for Newsnight. The event is at 6.30 at the Guildhall Old Museum. For more information contact ginny@macbethmediarelations.co.uk

* The surge in credit-crunch related litigation means that expert witnesses are in increasingly short supply, according to Sweet & Maxwell, the legal information publisher. A survey found that 28 per cent of law firms say that they are finding it "extremely difficult" or "difficult" to find the right expert witness for their case. Even before the credit crunch, figures from City law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain showed that litigation was on the up - with the number of High Court commercial disputes jumping 25 per cent in 2006 (latest figures available) to nearly 62,000 after years of decline. The sudden surge in litigation has meant that some experts have started to run out of capacity to take on more work, Sweet & Maxwell says. One forensic accountant said his team had "almost more work than we can handle" and other expert said that with the "massive surge" in banking litigation, expert witness work was taking up "almost all my time". Things could get even worse. Professor Alan Riley, of The City Law School, predicts international litigation is set to boom. "As the credit crunch bites, all the chickens will come home to roost. Flawed business models that may look fine in climbing markets are exposed in harsher economic times and as a result, all sides head to the courts or arbitrators."

* A High Court judge has gone back to school - to lead tributes to two former teachers at a special memorial service. When he celebrated his 60th birthday recently, Mr Justice Burton made mention of teachers Joe Richardson and Robin Paul in his list of "personal heroes" who had had defining influence on his life. In October, Sir Michael Burton will meet up with old boys and staff at his old school Bilton Grange, to pay tribute to the two teachers who taught for 53 years between them at the Dunchurch prep school. Both died earlier this year.

* David Edmonds, who as chairman of the Legal Services Board is the new arch-regulator of the legal profession, gave a glimpse of his thoughts at a Law Society breakfast this week. The board's approach, he said, would be "proportionate, pragmatic and principle-based" rather than "theoretical or prescriptive". But Parliament would not have given the Board its "pretty draconian range of intervention powers" if everything was incapable of improvement, he said. "Good progress has been made - but we won't hesitate to force the pace further where we're convinced that the evidence justifies this."

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