What if Google launched a law firm?
A few months ago Google added car insurance to its ‘Google Compare’ suite of products, products which Google says are designed to help people make confident and more informed financial decisions. Did those in the insurance industry see this coming? Probably. Can they do much about it? Probably not. Are they worried by it? I should say so. So I pose this question. What if Google decided to launch a full range consumer legal services business in the UK tomorrow?
Be careful what you wish for
A cynic looking at the government’s consultation on “preserving and enhancing the quality of criminal advocacy” might well feel that Lord Chancellor Michael Gove was deliberately trying to foment trouble between the Bar and solicitors to divide and rule. It would be easy to characterise the proposals as giving the Bar what it wants by ‘doing something’ about those money-grabbing solicitors encroaching on the Bar’s patch. It’s hard to see anything that solicitors will like about them.
Gove’s love-in with the Bar continues
Legal Futures has gained exclusive access to what is believed to be the transcript of a secret meeting held recently between Lord Chancellor Michael Gove and a delegation from the Bar Council.
The ADR pain in the backside
Who would have thought that something as inoffensive as ADR could cause such a rumpus? But the impact on the profession of the EU Directive on Consumer ADR has done just that. It means that, from today, every lawyer is obliged to point clients in the direction of an ADR provider should both of them wish to resolve a complaint that way, although the client still has the option of referring their complaint to the Legal Ombudsman
Advantages of keeping advocacy in-house – the rise of the solicitor-advocate
It has been 21 years since solicitors first acquired rights of audience in the higher courts but it has only been in the last decade or so that they began to seriously consider the advantages of keeping advocacy in-house. Many firms have created their own advocacy units consisting of solicitor-advocates and barristers, the latter realising that they had a better source of work as an in-house advocate within a firm of solicitors rather than awaiting ever-reducing numbers of instructions coming into chambers.
