Practice Management

The public believes that the legal system should be modernised faster than is happening at present, with many feeling “the justice system has retained tradition at the expense of efficiency”, new research has found. Education about the law and legal process, and simplifying legal language were also keys to improving access to justice.

A High Court judge has launched an extraordinary attack on a senior property partner, saying that although he was “on the whole” an honest witness, he “plainly cut corners all the time in his practice”. Mrs Justice Proudman said Michael Parker regarded himself as a “man of commerce”.

A group of London local authorities, a legal software supplier and an electronic data specialist claim to have developed the first “entirely digital” process for court proceedings.

Lawyers routinely over-estimate the current state of machine-learning computers but under-estimate their potential future capabilities, according to the chief executive of ROSS Intelligence, the company building an application billed as the world’s first “artificially intelligent attorney”.

Cognitive computing could be used to suggest which arguments in court might play well or badly with a particular judge at a given time of day, according to a senior member of IBM’s Watson development team, although she outlined a number of more benign uses for the technology.

A report for the Council of Europe has argued that online dispute resolution and use of IT could improve access to justice by “offering solutions to the problems of judicial inefficiency, the high cost of litigation and geographical barriers”.

Solicitors who offer ‘unbundled’ legal advice to help litigants deal with challenging parts of the process provide an “invaluable” service to both the court and litigants, the Court of Appeal said yesterday. In a ruling that gave explicit backing to unbundling, the court refused to read broader responsibilities into a limited retainer.

Lawyers should use artificial intelligence to improve their work, drive efficiencies, increase accuracy and retain clients, the president of the Law Society has said. However, Jonathan Smithers said “expert intervention by lawyers” would always be needed.

Solicitors acting for both sides in property transactions are under a duty to disclose crucial details to lenders, the Court of Appeal has ruled. They are not expected to act as a “detective or bloodhound”, but should report adverse “non-confidential information”.

The Court of Appeal has made an additional finding of negligence against leading London law firm Withers over its drafting of an LLP agreement and increased the £1.6m in damages awarded in the High Court by a further £375,000.