Latest news
Ince in emergency fund-raise with cost of cyber-attack put at £5m
Shares in listed law firm Ince Group collapsed to their lowest-ever level yesterday after it said a £8.6m fund-raise was needed to ward off financial problems. Its chief executive is also set to quit.
Barrister compliance with transparency rules increases sharply
The Bar has improved its compliance with the rules on transparency and more consumers are shopping around for potential providers, Bar Standards Board research has found.
SDT rejects restoration plea 21 years after strike off
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has refused to allow an immigration solicitor to be restored to the roll 21 years after he was struck off for accounts rule breaches.
SRA agrees to keep Solicitors Indemnity Fund alive with £6m undertaking
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has agreed to a request from the Solicitors Indemnity Fund to underwrite its potential liabilities in continuing to operate by providing a £6m undertaking.
LSB tells regulators to get moving with ongoing competence reform
The legal regulators have been given six months to deliver action plans to the Legal Services Board on how they are going to reform their regimes to ensure lawyers’ ongoing competence.
“Trial by internet” – Judges turn to Wikipedia to aid reasoning
Judges are using Wikipedia to research legal issues and allowing it to influence their reasoning, ground-breaking research has discovered.
Union’s head of legal receives apology over picket line arrest
A barrister working as a trade union’s in-house lawyer has received a formal apology and damages of £3,000 from the Metropolitan Police after he was arrested on a picket line.
Barrister awarded £22k over chambers’ response to gender-critical tweets
Garden Court Chambers has been ordered to pay member Allison Bailey damages of £22,000 for injury to feelings over the way it handled complaints about her gender critical views.
MoJ aims to extend compulsory mediation to “all county court users”
The Ministry of Justice’s “future ambition” is to extend compulsory mediation from small claims to all county court users and so it has begun considering its role in overseeing the mediation sector.
Law firms generate £1.4bn in fees from clinical negligence cases
Clinical negligence law firms earned around £1.4bn in fees during 2021/22, an 8% increase on the year before, according to new research that also predicted Covid could lead to more claims.
Blog
The AI governance gap in law firms and why it matters now
A third of law firms are already using AI tools with no formal policy in place to govern how AI gets used, what data goes into it, or who’s accountable when something goes wrong.
Information isn’t oversight – lessons from the PM Law review
The PM Law review’s real findings perhaps point to a failure mode applying to any organisation sitting on scattered risk information.
AI can do the work but it cannot inherit the lawyer’s duty
What happens when lawyers delegate cognitive work to AI but remain personally responsible for judgements they may no longer have independently reasoned through?
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