Practice Management

A leading north-west law firm has been ordered to pay £68,000 in VAT for electronic local authority property searches it procured from an agency, after a tribunal ruled that they should not have been treated as disbursements. The case, in which the Law Society unsuccessfully intervened, could have significant repercussions for many conveyancing firms.

A contract review technology company incubated by Cambridge-based law firm Taylor Vinters today launched an artificial intelligent product that it claims is on average 60 times faster and 30% cheaper than traditional paralegals.

Law firms embracing artificial intelligence are expected to create new business models to pass on the benefits to clients, research by City giant Herbert Smith Freehills has suggested. The way trainees learn about the law will also change and may reshape in the traditional pyramid shape of the large firms, it said.

Legal chatbot pioneer Josh Browder has launched a new service – dubbed the first automated law suit – to help those affected by the Equifax security breach bring small claims in the US, and has told Legal Futures that he is planning to bring it to the UK as well.

The surge in claims against solicitors over their advice to home buyers on ground rent clauses has begun, with 400 issued in less than a year, according to new research. It also identified the discount rate, undersettling and conveyancing fraud as the other big negligence risks facing the solicitors’ profession due to the wider economic environment.

Black, Asian and minority ethnic defendants do not trust legal aid solicitors and often enter not guilty pleas against advice as a result, according to a major report. The Lammy Review said BAME defendants often saw duty solicitors as ‘part of the system’ and so pleaded not guilty.

A claims management company has withdrawn a YouTube advert designed to generate holiday sickness claims after the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that it was misleading. It is the latest front in the battle against sickness claims being waged by ABTA, which lodged the complaint.

Machine learning could be used to explain even the most complicated and obscure wills in plain English, a software entrepreneur has predicted. He said another development over the coming years could be the use of chatbots to handle routine enquiries.

The Court of Appeal has criticised law firms which attract clients through adverts which suggest their previous solicitors may have undersettled personal injury claims. It also said there should be “a sensible limit” on what should be expected of a solicitor operating on a fixed fee in a “high volume, low cost commoditised scheme”.

A paralegal employed by a personal injury firm under an oral contract was entitled to a bonus payment worth almost £14,000, an employment tribunal has ruled. The judge said the firm could not unilaterally vary the contract that entitled the paralegal to up to 10% of profit costs above a target set at five times his gross salary.