“Just so I’m crystal clear on this,” said Santa, with just a hint of frustration in his voice, “you’re telling me that, from May next year, I can’t use my database of good and naughty boys and girls unless I spend Mrs Claus’s Christmas money on GDPR consultants?” The board meeting of Claus Logistics at the North Pole was not going well and Muggins, the legal & compliance elf, was shifting uneasily in his little pine seat. “With respect, Mr Claus, I’m not sure you’re allowed to refer to them as boys and girls any longer because I heard a bloke on Polar FM and he was saying…” “Enough!” said Santa with a look that could melt the frost on a reindeer’s muzzle. “At the risk of misquoting Monty Python, I don’t care a tinker’s cuss for all this red tape.”

The internet has been awash recently with initial coin offers (ICOs). Although crypto-currency has been around for a few years, only recently have hip-hop stars got in on the action. ICOs are an initial public offering (IPO) of crypto-currency, but to understand that (or even to understand why you should care about ICOs), you have to understand what crypto-currency is, and the blockchain technology on which it relies.

Written in honour of Malcolm Young, recently deceased founding member of AC/DC, there are nine references to AC/DC songs throughout this article. We will send a £20 iTunes voucher to the first person who gets in touch to tell us what they are. The forces that are driving change in the legal profession are wide and varied. The ability of law firms and individual solicitors to respond positively and innovatively to these challenges will determine who survives and prospers. Competition for new business is fierce, a dog eat dog world, one might say. Which brings us to AC/CD. Not my favourite rock band, but an acronym for Attract, Convert, Close and Delight – the four pillars of inbound marketing.

In 1950, Alan Turing asked himself, “Can machines think”? Almost 70 years later, the Turing Test remains unbeaten. But a computer that can imitate human intelligence seems just a matter of time. Today, however, AI is still in its infancy. This is especially the case in the legal world, not particularly known for its urge for technological innovation. And as is the case with new technologies, a healthy dose of scepticism is required to distinguish between hype and opportunity. The most sophisticated AI systems still produce non-intelligent false-positives and cannot understand contextual information.

There’s a growing sense of trepidation amongst the UK’s legal community with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into play in just a few months’ time. I’ve spoken to many SME law firms over the past year and, although many of them know that it’s coming, the majority don’t yet know what they need to do about it. It seems this confusion isn’t just confined to the legal profession either. I was very interested to read the findings of a recent survey by the learning provider Litmos Heroes, which found that almost 30% of UK business decision-makers say they are completely in the dark about the law changes and what they need to do to ensure their business is ready.