Practice Management

The Law Society has called on the government to allow firms to use the apprenticeship levy more flexibly than now to create new jobs and retrain staff as part of the support needed in the wake of Covid-19.

Workers from disadvantaged backgrounds are being left behind by the apprenticeship system, including in the law, with numbers slumping by more than a third since the apprenticeship levy was introduced.

The ground-breaking DoNotPay chatbot – which describes itself as the world’s first robot lawyer – is to ramp up its UK offering after securing $12m (£9.6m) in backing from Silicon Valley.

Security experts have highlighted email interception as the “weakest link” in firms’ defences against cybercrime in the property market.

A private equity company that last year bought two major volume conveyancing firms has now taken a minority stake in a solicitor-owned legal technology company for £1.5m.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is set to begin a multi-year project to increase understanding of why Black, Asian and minority ethnic students perform worse than white students.

A former employee of national law firm Shoosmiths – who won damages for harassment back in 2017 – has had a string of further claims thrown out, with a tribunal branding them vexatious.

Unregulated providers are leading the way with developing consumer-facing legal technology, showing that the way solicitors are regulated is “not an obstacle to innovation”.

It is not clear whether staff can refuse to come into work or decide to leave a workplace if they think it’s unsafe because of Covid-19, the Law Society has told law firms.

Lawyers who advised clients on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme are at risk of claims as the government looks to claw back payments to which recipients were not entitled.