Practice Management

The market for blockchain-backed ‘smart contracts’ should grow quickly, according to a partner at a global law firm, who is already working with the emerging technology. Lee Bacon, a partner at Clyde & Co, made the prediction as his firm launched a consultancy aimed at advising insurers and other clients on them.

SME law firms are investing their marketing budgets in old-style strategies they know are often ineffective, rather than explore new technologies that are already taking hold in other sectors, according to research being launched at today’s PI Futures conference in Liverpool.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service is to start hosting digital family court bundles centrally next year as part of its project to digitise the courts, it has emerged in a briefing sent to family judges. Moving from manual paper bundles to digital bundles in the family courts is widely seen as the best way to eliminate errors and reduce costs.

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.