Practice Management
Law Society to start onsite visits to check firms’ CQS compliance
The Law Society is dramatically beefing up oversight of its Conveyancing Quality Scheme by introducing onsite compliance checks and many more desk-based assessments.
Employment tribunals set for online justice pilot
The employment tribunals are set to host the pilot of an end-to-end online service through which cases would be run, the president of tribunals has revealed. Machine learning could also be introduced.
Lord Chief backs “smartphone justice” but not so keen on AI
There is no reason why litigants could not access the courts on their smartphones in future, the Lord Chief Justice said yesterday, but questioned the extent to which AI would handle judicial tasks.
Gauke hails ABSs and sector’s commitment to lawtech
The Lord Chancellor yesterday hailed the impact of alternative business structures in driving competition and fostering innovation in the legal market.
Slater & Gordon backs app offering legal advice for £24 a month
A new app that offers users the full range of consumer legal advice and support for £24 a month is to be piloted in the coming weeks ahead of a roll-out early next year.
Government invests to research how AI can improve the law
The government is to fund research into the potential for AI to improve the legal system, with a warning that, if the technology is mishandled, it could have dire consequences.
Divorce is not a “blank cheque” for litigation, judge warns
Litigation is not a “blank cheque” and divorcing people cannot behave on the basis that they are bound to be reimbursed for their costs, a leading family law judge has warned.
Labour promises Bar training overhaul as part of legal reforms
A Labour government will reform barristers’ training by putting it back in the hands of the Inns of Court and ending the “profiteering” by commercial providers, Baroness Chakrabarti has said.
Training review professors criticise “rudimentary” SQE
The four lead researchers behind the Legal Education and Training Review, which paved the way for radical changes in legal education, have criticised the Solicitors Qualifying Examination.
LCJ: Digital exclusion from online justice “a very small problem”
The Lord Chief Justice is optimistic that digital exclusion resulting from the government’s court modernisation programme will be a “very small problem”, he said yesterday.
Blog
From text to world: The legal significance of multimodal AI
The next phase of AI, already underway, will integrate text with vision, sound, motion and even touch. This will produce systems that no longer ‘read about’ the world but perceive it.
The new leaders of law
Where once many law firm owners remained technology sceptics, a growing number are now shaped by leaders who are digitally fluent and commercially oriented.
Managing lock-up, cash flow and billing inefficiencies better
If law firms view lock-up, cash flow and billing processes as key indicators of financial performance – and therefore risk – they can identify problems early.
