News

---

The Bar Council is to publish new guidance for barristers and chambers on dealing with sexual harassment, amid claims that many chambers’ existing policies are “wholly ineffective”.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has issued 23 waivers from its rules under a new policy – 18 of which have gone to sole practitioner law firms which together make up another firm’s partnership.

Solicitors’ firms are moving their whole practices or conveyancing departments to the oversight of the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, it has emerged.

There should be specific protection against victimisation for compliance officers who report their solicitors to their regulator, the Law Society has argued.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has won a £700,000 award from the government to accelerate the ideas of law firms and others to improve access to justice using AI.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has strongly criticised the “insufficient” plans of the second largest probate regulator to introduce new requirements on publishing prices.

If there is one thing a law firm can do to achieve buy-in from lawyers sceptical of the need for change, it is show clients saying they have rewarded an innovative approach, the author of a major book has said.

Three top City law firms have joined a high-powered international consortium to launch a platform that aims to set industry standards for the use of AI, smart contracts and other new tech.

An online lawyer-matching service for companies has secured £3.4m in funding, with an investor predicting that it could become “a virtual and distributed tech-driven global law firm”.

The world when the Legal Services Act was drawn up “simply does not exist in the same way now” and the inherent tensions in the Act are becoming “increasingly apparent”.