Practice Management

The High Court has ruled that a partner in a law firm who paid himself £16,500 after he had left the firm and was “effectively competing with it” breached his director’s duties.

The Solicitors Qualifying Examination – the new way that solicitors will qualify – will be launched in autumn 2021, with the candidate fee likely to range between £3,000 and £4,500.

The legal profession has “a real opportunity to blaze a trail” on diversity, the Lord Chancellor said today. David Gauke said women at the very top of the profession should be the norm.

Law firms are still underperforming when dealing with potential clients on the telephone rather than face-to-face, a mystery shopping survey has found.

Artificial intelligence is likely to be used to lower the cost and increase the speed of judicial decisions, a QC specialising in IT and algorithms has predicted.

A “disastrous IT failure” suffered by a law firm’s biggest client tipped it over the edge into administration and a pre-pack sale to fast-growing national firm Taylor Rose TTKW.

A former partner of a London firm that went into liquidation has lost his bid to strike out Barclays Bank’s claim to enforce a guarantee he provided to cover a loan and overdraft.

Solicitors do not have to carry out investigative tasks in areas they have not been asked to deal with, however beneficial to the client it might have turned out to be.

Only a tiny number of conveyancing firms are committed to innovation, while consumers are pressing for technology that gives them access to information, a survey said.

The legal profession will have to develop “cyber ethics” to cope with the very different issues that the growing use of technology is having on the practice of law.