Practice Management

A will-writing company has been fined £30,000 for making unsolicited marketing calls to people registered with the Telephone Preference Service. It used information from a third-party company, which claimed the people on its list had opted in to receive unsolicited direct marketing calls.

There need to be more women and ethnic minorities at senior levels of law firms and taking silk, the Lord Chancellor said yesterday as she pledged action to “force the pace of change” in improving diversity in the legal profession. She announced new measures to encourage experienced lawyers from all fields – and especially solicitors – to seek senior judicial roles.

Technology is transforming the world at a furious pace and artificial intelligence (AI) and the legal frameworks that will emerge from it and similar developments, offer “massive opportunities” for lawyers, according to a leading futurologist.

Fast-growing national practice DWF has become the first law firm to join the British Quality Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation set up by government and industry which describes itself as Europe’s largest corporate membership organisation dedicated to performance improvement. Other members include Marks & Spencer, Virgin Media and O2.

A “brand-driven” solicitors’ practice specialising in employment law has become an alternative business structure in order to bring its ‘virtual’ barristers’ chambers under the ABS umbrella. Once the concept is proven, it aims to roll it out across other areas of practice.

The Competition Appeal Tribunal will today begin hearing a training provider’s claim that the Law Society acted anti-competitively by requiring law firms to buy its own training in order to maintain their Conveyancing Quality Scheme accreditation.

An ‘angel investor’ network is being constructed that promises to match ex-City partners with lawtech start-ups, to help them gain a foothold in large law firms with advice, contacts, and seed capital. The favoured model would see two investors each invest £50,000 in exchange for around 10% of the equity

The majority at the employed Bar “do not feel supported or that their work is recognised”, both by the self-employed Bar and the Bar Council, research released yesterday by the latter has found. It said employed barristers enjoyed financial security, with average salaries around the £70,000 mark.

Many client-care letters get the lawyer/client relationship off on the wrong foot, reinforcing preconceptions of lawyers’ letters as complex and difficult to read, and not providing the information that consumers actually want, new research has found.

An online court should be introduced slowly and modestly rather than as ‘big bang’, according to one of the original architects of the dispute resolution model from which Lord Justice Briggs drew when devising his Civil Court Structure Review.