Practice Management

Robots and artificial intelligence will dominate legal practice within 15 years, perhaps leading to the “structural collapse” of law firms, a report predicting the shape of the legal market has envisaged.

London law firm Hodge Jones & Allen has this week received an apology and “substantial” damages from The Times newspaper over a front-page article which claimed the firm was being sued by a former client for negligence in relation to a MMR vaccine claim.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to end the monopoly currently enjoyed by the Law Society’s ‘Find a Solicitor’ website, by making the data behind it available to commercial comparison sites. It is also to set up own “online regulatory register” for the public.

The “traditionally wide” knowledge gap between lawyers and consumers is “narrowing all the time”, Canadian futurologist Jordan Furlong told delegates at this week’s Legal Futures Annual Conference.

“Overwhelming disagreement” made the Solicitors Regulation Authority abandon a plan to make compliance officers sign declarations that their firms followed the accounts rules, it has emerged. But further changes to accountant’s reports are coming.

There is to be a drive to recruit retiring law firm partners to the senior judiciary in a bid to improve diversity, it has emerged. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, said he is looking at a “more sensible way” of recruiting partners who retire early onto the High Court bench.

The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that a TV medical negligence advert for Merseyside personal injury specialists Michael W Halsall Solicitors was “likely to cause undue distress to pregnant viewers”.

The turnover of SME law firms in London and South East rose by 4% this year, according to an annual benchmarking survey by accountants HW Fisher & Co. However, the survey warned that rising overheads would continue to put pressure on profits.

More than a million passengers travelling to and from UK airports are still to claim delayed flight compensation for last year alone, a survey has found. However, it suggested that passengers may prefer to claim compensation directly from airlines.

The Supreme Court has backed a law firm’s arguments that, following a breach of trust, it should have to pay in damages only the amount which the lender would have lost if the breach had not occurred.