News

---

Helping to enhance public understanding of the law will “unlock demand for legal services”, solicitors have been advised as part of a new push to promote public legal education (PLE). It came as a high-powered non-partisan group of MPs and peers was formed to promote PLE.

One Legal’s acquisition of Kaim Todner sets the foundation for further deals on the back of “significant investment” it has received to expand, the alternative business structure’s founder has said. Trevor Howarth, who shot to prominence as the boss of now-defunct Stobart Barristers, also did not resile from his controversial description of criminal legal aid firms as “very wounded animals ready to die”.

Software or data analysis techniques that could help flag up fraudulent legal aid claims or predict the likelihood of someone re-offending are outcomes the Ministry of Justice is hoping could come from a hackathon it will hold later this month.

South west law firm Stephens Scown is to become a pioneering alternative business structure at the end of his month, which will allow it to remain a partnership while introducing employee ownership. Managing partner Robert Camp he hoped it would provide a “way forward” for other law firms.

An alternative business structure to be launched by the Royal College of Nursing and Cardiff-based NewLaw next month is to limit its offering to personal injury, it has emerged, making it a markedly different offering from that set up last year by the British Medical Association.

Pekama, a legal tech company with investment from law firm Taylor Vinters, has launched a mobile app which it believes will trigger a “big change” in the way lawyers communicate. Zeev Fisher, the chief executive of Pekama and a solicitor, said the app had been tested by three law firms.

One Legal – the alternative business structure originally set up in 2013 to work alongside the now-defunct Stobart Barristers – has shot back into the limelight by acquiring well-known criminal defence law firm Kaim Todner.

The partner at City giant DLA Piper who hit the headlines in 2014 for lewd e-mail exchanges with Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore has been referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

The first academic study of compliance officers for legal practice has found a “tendency” not to report regulatory failures to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. There was also evidence of COLPs at ABSs with mainly non-lawyer management struggling to get across the importance of following the rules.

NAHL Group – the business that owns the National Accident Helpline – has accelerated its march into conveyancing with the launch of a legal comparison site. The Solicitor Finder is initially focused on the residential property sector but will be expanded into other sectors in due course.