Using mobile for online access has been steadily growing and has featured in a few trend predictions before, but 2015 will truly be the year that you must go mobile to retain and attract customers. For the first time, shopping transactions made by mobile outstripped desktop in 2014’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday activity.

We all know the end of a year is a time to reflect on the year’s triumphs and disasters and, for some, to do some planning for the future. So to assist, here are some of our predictions for the legal sector over the next 20 years – and we’ll buy you all a drink if we’re proved wrong.

Since the Jackson reforms of 2013, after-the-event (ATE) insurance has been suffering from something of an identity crisis. Some law firms question the value of ATE, believing they can in effect ‘self-insure’ the adverse cost risk, whilst customers question the need for ATE when the law firm is happy to run a case on a conditional fee agreement.

Maybe in the 21st century it is time to replace the well-worn saying “lies, damned lies and statistics” with a new version: “KPIs, damned KPIs and meaningless data.” Earlier this month the SRA published data indicating that 83% of issues raising concerns about solicitors were dealt with and concluded within 12 months. In contrast, the average time taken to issue proceedings at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal was 550 days.

It’s been nearly two years since we launched our Excellence Mark programme of client service support for LawNet member firms. And during this time we’ve completed over 1,000 mystery shopping exercises which have revealed some interesting insights for our firms. One of the things that stands out is the discrepancy that still exists between the scores achieved for the walk-in mystery shopping enquiries and those made on the phone.