There’s nothing like the prospect of losing something to make you feel all warm and nostalgic about it, even when that something is your annual16 hours CPD requirement… There is a widespread view that the current CPD system is not working. Everyone knows stories of people who register for CPD courses and leave before the end, or those who take courses which do not relate to their areas of practice, just to get the points. This is even before you begin to think, why 16 hours? Why not 10, or 25 – or 50 for that matter?

There are too many law firms chasing too little work up against aggressive new competition with huge marketing budgets… You’ve read that many times before, but what can be done to help the smaller law firms compete? Well, to paraphrase a well-known phrase, it’s ‘reputation, reputation, reputation’. You don’t need a huge budget for this but you may need to change a few attitudes and devote some time to it.

In a guest post, Adam Makepeace, the practice director of leading criminal law firm Tuckers, explains why he was elated (kind of) by the government’s legal aid announcement last week but that the Lord Chancellor needs to level the digital playing field between firms if the market is somehow to come to his rescue.

Norway, a country of five million people, was ranked ninth in the ‘Ease of Doing Business 2014’ survey, one ahead of the UK. However when matched to the registering property index, Norway is ranked 10th, while the UK sits at a lowly 68th. Late last year, our government sent a fact-finding group to Norway to learn about how the Norwegians have run their central government mapping, land registry and water information as a combined function successfully for the past 18 years. It may provide some valuable lessons.

It’s been a winter like no other… or has it? Perhaps this time it’s just rain and wind, not snow and ice. Is this simply what nature throws at us on our rocky outcrop in the North Atlantic? What’s certain is that weather patterns have become extreme over the last 15 or so years, prompting climate scientists to rewrite models predicting more severe weather bringing more moisture and therefore more flooding. But what does this mean for home buyers and the conveyancers acting for them?