Latest news

Leading alternative legal services provider Axiom has launched a purpose-built service, incorporating artificial intelligence, to help companies update over 7.5m financial services contracts in the run-up to Brexit. It described this as the largest contract rewriting and updating exercise ever seen.

Mid-sized law firms are convinced that their IT spend is adding to profitability but three out of four make no effort to measure their return on investment, according to new research. It also found that more than two-thirds of firms had no CRM system and more than a quarter had no practice management system.

The Legal Services Board has approved an initial application by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to introduce the Solicitors Qualifying Examination. Despite intense pressure, LSB chief executive Neil Buckley said there were “no grounds” to reject the SRA’s application, setting out the framework for the regime.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) has completely cleared a solicitor at Preston-based personal injury firm Barber & Co of serious allegations, including that he had wrongly taken success fees from clients’ damages. The SDT also cleared the firm’s principal, Arif Barber, of the most serious allegations.

There is a “concerning tendency on the part of the advocates simply to interrupt each other in an effort to advance their competing submissions”, a High Court judge has said as he reviewed a hearing that turned into a “shouting match”.

A conveyancing fee-earner who covered up her mistakes by paying two lenders what they were owed out of her own pocket has been banned from working in the profession. The Solicitors Regulation Authority said it was “undesirable for her to be involved in a legal practice”.

A solicitor who assaulted his “coercive and manipulative” mother after they had both been drinking has been suspended by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for four months. He played the tribunal an audio recording in which his mother “repeatedly used foul language about his sister”, stating that she hated her.

Dinners at the Inns of Court will remain part of the world of prospective barristers after the Bar Standards Board decided to maintain the role of the inns in their training. But in the light of cases where barristers and students have been found to have lied about their qualifications, the regulator is introducing greater checks on students’ backgrounds.

A start-up is aiming to change the way large firms buy legal services by offering them a software tool to calculate and manage their costs. ClearCosts enables general counsel and other major buyers of legal services to calculate “a proportionate fee for each stage of a dispute” and measure their lawyers’ performance.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has today unveiled its second attempt to reduce the compulsory level of professional indemnity insurance to £500,000 – although conveyancers would have to secure £1m in cover. It also wants to turn the Compensation Fund explicitly into a ‘hardship’ fund and ban relatively wealthy people from claiming on it.