Family
Insurance and client capability are “main barriers” to unbundling
The availability of professional indemnity insurance and the capability of clients are the main concerns for law firms looking at unbundled services, research has indicated.
Law firm’s “extremely disquieting” failure to comply with court order
A High Court judge has described as “extremely disquieting” the failure of a North-West law firm to comply with a disclosure order – even though ultimately the order was unnecessary.
Resolution embraces ‘one lawyer, one couple’ approach to divorce
Family lawyers group Resolution is to start promoting the ‘one lawyer, two clients’ model for divorce that both law firms and unregulated providers are starting to offer.
Family specialists choose employee ownership over acquisition
The founders of a specialist family law firm have spurned potential acquirors to transfer it instead into an employee ownership trust, saying the move sends a positive signal to would-be staff.
Divorce litigation becoming unaffordable for all but the rich, warns judge
Financial remedy litigation seems to be “fast heading for Ritz Hotel status – so expensive that it is only accessible by the very rich”, a senior family judge warned yesterday.
Online rule committee will be catalyst for digital justice, says Birss
The work of the new Online Procedure Rules Committee will help connect the whiplash portal and other pre-action regimes to the court system electronically, the deputy head of civil justice has said.
Fixed-fee family law information service aims to “fill knowledge gap”
A fixed-fee family law information service was launched this week to “fill a real gap in public knowledge” about the divorce process, and ensure people are properly informed before seeing a solicitor.
Research: Family law market grows as number of firms falls
The family law market grew by 4.1% in 2021 and the rate of growth should increase in the coming years, but the number of law firms in the field is falling, a new report has found.
Treat family separations “as transactions, not litigation”
Family separation cases should “operate in a transactional way, as with conveyancing, rather than under the banner of litigation”, the chair of the Family Solutions Group has argued.
Litigation funder can be joined to financial remedy proceedings
A litigation funder owed up to £1m by the wife in a “bitterly contested” divorce can be joined as a party to the financial remedy proceedings, the High Court has ruled.
Blog
Change in regulator shouldn’t make AML less of a priority
While SRA fines for AML have been climbing, many in the profession aren’t confident they will get any relief from the FCA, a body used to dealing with a highly regulated industry.
There are 17 million wills waiting to be written
The main reason cited by people who do not have a will was a lack of awareness as to how to arrange one. As a professional community, we seem to be failing to get our message across.
The case for a single legal services regulator: why the current system is failing
From catastrophic firm collapses to endemic compliance failures, the evidence is mounting that the current multi-regulator model is fundamentally broken.
