Practice Management

Express Solicitors, the Manchester personal injury firm, is poised to make further acquisitions after securing £10m funding from the Royal Bank of Scotland. It said the money allowed a focus on growing the business “without having to compromise” on other areas.

The Bar Council has joined forces with a legal credit finance specialist to enable direct access barristers to offer payment plans to their clients. BARCO, the Bar’s escrow account, will hold the loans obtained for clients by Legal Cost Finance.

An American lawyer has successfully sued over an online review posted by a British man, winning £50,000 damages at the High Court. Timothy Bussey, a criminal law attorney based in Colorado, found himself the target of a review attached to his firm’s Google Maps profile.

Irwin Mitchell has become the latest major consumer law firm to launch a new advertising campaign aimed across a spread of its services, including a personal injury commercial that it said would “distance” the practice from other firms.

Solicitors are not under a general duty to check the credit status of parties in a commercial transaction unless instructed to, the High Court has ruled. Who to trust in a business situation is “a commercial decision for the client to take and not the solicitor”.

HM Revenue & Customs is expecting a rush of solicitors owning up to income they have not declared as next Monday’s deadline for the ‘Solicitors Tax Campaign’ draws near.

Professor Richard Susskind, IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice, has warned lawyers that they have a “window of opportunity” before technological changes in the 2020s transform the way they work.

A law firm ‘named and shamed’ today by the government for failing to pay the minimum wage has hit back strongly. It was included in a list of 70 employers because it “neglected to pay £530.96 to a worker”.

The legal profession of the future is going to be younger, Neville Eisenberg, managing partner of City law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP), told the Global Law Summit in London today.

Emerging countries and large corporations will lead the way on court technology while the UK and USA lag behind, experts at the Global Law Summit in London have predicted just a week after the Civil Justice Council unveiled its blueprint for online dispute resolution.