Practice Management

The Legal Ombudsman today appealed to solicitors’ bottom line to persuade them to take complaints more seriously, saying that law firms and other providers could increase their profits by up to 3% if they do.

What would you call a person who knows a couple of thousand local people and businesses that would make great clients for your firm and who are not? You probably call them ‘my accountant’, or maybe the chamber of commerce, or the local estate agents, the secondary school. All of these will have contacts with hundreds or thousands of people who could be clients for your firm and who are not – and they are local. People want advice delivered locally. Most firms could quadruple the size of their businesses, without having to gain new clients more than 30 minutes travel time from their offices. This is how.

There have been some angry reactions to the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s publication last Friday of the names of 136 law firms which did not secure professional indemnity insurance by 29 December.

Leading volume conveyancer Barnetts has today been broken into four after going into administration. However, no jobs are being lost at the Southport-based firm, whose senior partner, Richard Barnett, described the move as a “fantastic opportunity” for the firm.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is set to perform a u-turn on allowing unrated insurers to offer solicitors cover after discovering that they do not always have the same protections as rated insurers.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has published a list of 136 firms that failed to renew their professional indemnity insurance since October, but said a small number have failed to close properly.

More than 6,000 law firms have yet to submit their workforce diversity data to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the regulator warned yesterday. They now have less than three weeks until the 31 January deadline for reporting the data collected from partners and staff.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority should this week publish a list of those law firms which were to have closed on 29 December because they failed to secure professional indemnity insurance, Legal Futures has learned.

It is unclear how many of the 116 firms that were meant to have shut down last week for failing to secure professional indemnity insurance have actually done so, the Solicitors Regulation Authority admitted yesterday.

Almost one in five lawyers complaining of stress are being bullied in the workplace, according to the latest statistics from the legal support charity LawCare, which also showed a large year-on-year increase in callers overall.

LegalZoom – the online US legal services business that recently launched in the UK – has strengthened its financial position by selling a large chunk of the business to leading European private equity company Permira.

Riverview Law has announced a collaboration with US technology pioneer Legal OnRamp to offer a service that can cope with massive regulatory burdens imposed on financial institutions to avoid a repeat of the 2008 banking crisis.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) has fought off the first judicial review to reach court, brought by a former solicitor unhappy that it had ordered his bill to be slashed. The case, involving a CFA, comes as LeO issues a report outlining problems caused by ‘no win, no fee’ deals.

Online giant LegalZoom – said to be the best-known legal brand in America – has soft-launched its UK service with the aim of giving consumers and small businesses “a smarter way to engage with a lawyer”, Legal Futures can reveal.

The toll of firms failing to renew professional indemnity insurance continues to rise, with another 34 people losing their jobs after home counties firm Hilliers HRW LLP called in administrators.