Practice Management

The proportion of law firms targeted by scammers has risen sharply over the last year, especially among larger firms, as has the number of practices taking out cyber-insurance, according to new research from the Law Society. The survey on indemnity insurance also showed that a significant minority of brokers continue not to disclose their commission.

City law firm Fieldfisher has invested in “game changer” technology that helps investors and start-ups conclude deals quickly online. SeedLegals describes itself as “the world’s first automated legal service for start-up funding rounds”.

A sole practitioner who did not have a client account and admitted using his office account “at times as a personal account” has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. The tribunal heard that Michael Healey, based in Liverpool, misappropriated over £31,000 of client money before going bankrupt.

An expanding team of more than 100 HM Land Registry lawyers dealt with 100,000 legal enquiries last year, although the organisation has stepped up digital reform efforts aimed at automating key parts of the registry’s work. For instance, the piloting of a digital mortgage service, part of a plan to enable paper-free legal deeds, will be widened later this year.

The student entrepreneur who developed a ground-breaking free chatbot ‘robot lawyer’ to help people challenge parking tickets is working on an ambitious plan to automate the divorce process with the assistance of a team of salaried paralegals, it has emerged. Josh Browder has obtained funding for legal support from a Silicon Valley venture capital fund.

Lawyers acting for mentally ill clients and dementia sufferers have been praised in surveys commissioned by the Legal Services Board on the needs of vulnerable consumers, but some did find it hard to deal with solicitors. The majority of dementia sufferers said their experience of seeing a solicitor had been “extremely positive”.

The growing ranks of legal bloggers commenting on often sensitive court rulings have been given comfort after a libel claim brought against a barrister who wrote about one on his personal website was struck out. Ben Amunwa warned that “lawyers on social media are more exposed to claims like this than ever before” but said the decision strengthened their position.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to change its indemnity insurance rules to make it easier for law firms to switch regulator, it announced yesterday. In a bid to encourage competition, the SRA will ditch the requirement that firms switching to another approved regulator have to buy run-off cover.

The Law Commission has set its sights on England and Wales becoming the first major jurisdiction in the world to allow electronic wills by proposing that the Lord Chancellor is given the power to introduce them by statutory instrument. It has also proposed giving the courts the power to treat a document as a will where the formalities are not followed.

A six-month private test of the government’s new online probate service started last month, it has emerged as it looks to digitise the 280,000 applications received each year. As part of the project, HM Courts & Tribunals Service is working to better understand solicitors’ needs to reduce the number of applications that have to be returned.