A big part of my job is to keep up-to-date with the legal press. Especially what’s going on at the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and other regulators, so I can then give our clients a heads-up about what’s on the horizon. As we settle into 2017, I can’t help thinking that the SRA is looking in the wrong direction. There is not enough focus on the real risks, the things that profoundly threaten the legal profession and the public.

A report from the Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation warns that law schools in the US are “in crisis” and doomed unless they must respond positively to the “disruption of the traditional model for the provision of legal services”. The report relishes the coming of Armageddon by a sector whose financial viability it says will soon be choked off by the transformation of the legal market. How does this thesis stack up from the other side of the Atlantic?

Lawyers will give you any number of reasons why their win-loss rates in court are not accurate reflections of their legal skills. Yet a growing number of companies are evaluating lawyers by this standard – compiling and analysing lawyers’ litigation track records to help consumers and businesses make more-informed hiring decisions. The shortcomings of evaluating lawyers by win rates are many. Not least of them is that so few cases ever make it to a win or loss. Of equal concern is that, in the nuances of law practice, it is not always obvious what constitutes a win or a loss.

The ‘quality versus quantity’ discussion has been prevalent in conveyancing firms for as long as I can remember. Sacrifice one to achieve the other is the common perception – but should we really see these elements as mutually exclusive? According to the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, the UK lags behind the US and Germany by some 30 percentage points when it comes to productivity, meaning a German worker takes four days to produce what a British worker does in five.

Cyber-security has been the subject of repeated headline news over the past few years. It’s a stark warning about the enhanced threats to our IT infrastructures and the need for constant vigilance of IT usage in the workplace. Worryingly, despite its high-risk status, cyber-crime remains fairly low down law firms’ agendas. Let’s give cyber-crime the attention it deserves. After all, it really is better to be safe than sorry. To help you out, here are 10 top tips on desktop security to create a robust, reliable and secure cyber environment.