The law is crying out for good secretaries, more and more of whom these days are men. Some of them later become legal executives and even solicitors, too, says Grania Langdon-Down

Age: Ten.

The proposed new corruption Bill will tighten up the law on corporate hospitality.

Accountants are leading the way in dealing with white-collar crime, writes George Staple

Business failures are currently running at an all-time low. But if, as expected, economic growth levels off there could be a swift increase in corporate fraud, business was warned yesterday. Roger Trapp reports on a fresh attempt to combat a perennial problem.

The following notes of judgments were prepared by the reporters of the All England Law Reports.

Trade secrets cannot be stolen, according to the law. But, says Grania Langdon-Down, change may be afoot to protect such intellectual property.

Once, the best lawyers were heard but not seen. Now firms understand that they must show themselves and their achievements to the world. Robert Verkaik gazes at the legal stars.

Law: A group set up by big City firms aims to change the face of solicitors' unpaid pro bono work.

Some top City solicitors are earning pounds 600,000 to pounds 700,000 a year as a result of the continuing boom in mergers and acquisitions and other corporate activity, according to figures released today.

Linklaters & Paines consolidated its position in the first half of the year as the most successful law firm advising on UK public takeovers. The firm worked on 18 deals worth a total of pounds 5.9m, coming top of the lawyers' mergers and acquisitions league table as it did for the whole of 1996.

Energy companies and consumer groups yesterday put their faith in self-regulation in an attempt to head off further damaging publicity about dubious sales practices in the emerging competitive domestic gas and electricity markets.

As the story of Andrew Regan's assault on the Cooperative Wholesale Society draws towards its final denouement, the City needs to be asking itself some hard and searching questions. No apology is offered for returning, scratched record like, to this extraordinary saga or for the high morale tone being adopted in these columns, for we are looking, we believe, at a very significant City scandal here.

The much-derided Serious Fraud Office (SFO) won two landmark court room cases this week, sending hotelier Robert Feld to jail for eight years and convicting Abbas Gokal in the world's biggest fraud case. But will this be enough to silence the SFO's legion of critics?