Marketing & PR

Lawyers were this week told not to be discouraged from embracing social media after a barrister who was among the legal pioneers on Twitter was fined for messages he posted on the service. However, the case does raise questions over the role of regulators in policing lawyers’ activity on Twitter.

A new service has been launched that allows solicitors to contact numerous sets of barristers chambers simultaneously to check what counsel are available for a case they are looking to cover. Meanwhile, another online service aimed at helping consumers find tradesmen is now targeting the legal market.

Almost half of partners and staff at the typical top 50 law firm are now on LinkedIn, nearly double the number in 2010, new research has found. It comes as the Law Society publishes the first formal guidance to solicitors on the use of social media.

The challenge for legal price comparison sites is to reconcile the public’s desire for an instant quote and fixed fees “with the reality that many areas of law are complex, lengthy, unpredictable, and, as such, cannot be achieved on a fixed-fee basis”, a Law Society report has concluded.

A large majority of partners at mid-sized law firms believe their practices need to grow by at least a third over the next three to five years to remain competitive, with many open to the idea of external investment, a recent survey has shown.

Ofcom has found ITV in breach of its code for allowing TV personality Amanda Holden to promote QualitySolicitors on the day she launched its tie-up with WH Smith. The network broke the rules on promoting services and on giving them undue prominence in programming.

The law firm behind Legal365 – the online legal service that is set to expand into a chain of city-centre high street shops – last night received the Law Society award for excellence in innovation. Last Cawthra Feather was recognised for a service that is “ready to compete in the new emerging legal services market”.

National law firm Russell Jones & Walker is planning to extend its personal injury brand Claims Direct into other areas of law, the firm has revealed. It is looking at areas such as employment and family law, wills and possibly conveyancing.

Big brand entrants to the legal market will have a “huge advantage” because of their vast client databases, the Chief Legal Ombudsman has warned. Adam Sampson said new entrants have an acute awareness how to utilise their existing clientele.

Bigger law firms are embracing social media but then failing to engage in two-way communications through it, new research has found. The survey found that nearly half of the firms prohibited staff from accessing social networks from work, even though clients were keen to interact that way.