Rocket Lawyer ramps up ahead of UK launch
Rocket Lawyer, the Google-backed US online legal document service, has taken the next step in its plans to launch in the UK this year by opening a London office and recruiting a senior member of the LexisNexis team to lead it.
Moorhead takes on ethics role as legal profession comes to terms with "paradigm-busting shifts"
University College London has appointed well-known academic Professor Richard Moorhead to its first chair in law and professional ethics. He said the changes hitting the legal professions are challenging “their ethics and their identities”.
Exclusive: SRA bids to increase its power to fine law firms – from £2,000 to £250m
The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s is planning to increase its power to fine law firms from £2,000 to £250m, and to £50m for individuals, Legal Futures can reveal. The Law Society has described the move as “misconceived”.
"Significant" number of chambers to avoid diversity data publication – but what about law firms?
Chambers with fewer than 10 staff and/or members should not have to publish the results of the diversity survey that they all have to complete this year, their regulator is to tell the Legal Services Board.
In-house lawyers face ABS dilemma
Organisations whose in-house solicitors provide reserved legal activities to people other than their employer – such as insurers, associations and local authorities – will have to decide for themselves whether by law they need to become alternative business structures, according to the SRA.
Co-op to roll out face-to-face legal advice in bank branches
The Co-op – which yesterday received its alternative business structure licence – is to provide legal services through its banking network as it seeks to challenge the “legal postcode lottery”, it has announced.
MPs "worried" about confusion over regulation and quality of legal services
The vast majority of MPs are concerned that their constituents may not understand what legal services are regulated and which are not, new research has found. It also identified concern that there is insufficient redress for consumers of legal services.
SRA to issue guidance after research finds lawyers failing the deaf
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to issue best-practice guidelines to solicitors and firms it regulates about being deaf aware, after new research showed that legal services were often inaccessible to people with hearing loss.
SRA unveils its first three ABSs
Co-operative Legal Services and high street firms John Welch and Stammers, and Lawbridge Solicitors Ltd have today become the first alternative business structures licensed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
LASPO: government suffers two defeats over legal aid for children, tightens referral fee ban
The government suffered two more defeats during yesterday’s final House of Lords stage of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, and also tightened up the ban on referral fees.
