Practice Management

A new collective marketing brand called Dynamo Legal has today announced plans to recruit 245 law firms across England and Wales and build a £7m advertising warchest. It is the brainchild of Welsh businessman Alexander Mills, who previously founded a company selling slate signs.

The dream of partnership is becoming ever harder to fulfil, especially for female solicitors, according to Law Society figures. Whereas in 1992 52% of solicitors in private practice were partners, that figure slumped to 42% in 2002 and less than 35% in 2012.

Law firms will be held responsible for breaching the personal injury referral fee ban if they sign up to ventures that appear to be genuine joint marketing schemes but prove illegal, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned. It will also target senior individuals within firms that “recklessly trade into insolvency”.

Three-quarters of lawyers in the UK and Ireland report being more stressed than they were five years ago but two-thirds are reluctant to report their concerns to employers, a survey has found. Seven out of ten said their work environment was stressful.

The names of 1,617 law firms and barristers who have been the subject of a formal decision by the Legal Ombudsman are now in the public domain. But there are positive signs for the legal profession in how few have recorded even five formal decisions.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is holding firm against criticism over its position on unrated professional indemnity insurers after Latvian underwriter Balva – which covers 1,300 law firms – was prohibited from writing new UK business.

Barristers and chambers staff now have access to a nursery nears the Inns of Court in the first of what could be a national network of childcare facilities. The Bar Nursery has been launched five years after the idea was first mooted.

There is a widespread desire to move away from the hourly rate model, according to a survey of in-house lawyers that found them wanting their external law firms to share risk. Senior counsel at 80 international companies believe that law firms should provide ‘budget certainty’.

Brands are not just for big firms. Thayne Forbes argues that they can work for smaller practices as well, explaining how to create one, where the value lies, ensuring it appeals to your target market and the risks of adopting a marketing collective’s brand instead.

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has warned that having a complex tax avoidance scheme approved by a senior lawyer does not render it safe after a specialist tax QC who designed his own scheme saw it struck down.

Two-thirds of law firms saw their professional indemnity insurance premiums go down last year, with switching insurers the most common way of securing it, Law Society figures have revealed. The society has also warned that under-pressure small firms are risking their future by going with unrated providers.

More than four out of five of divorcees want family law services provided by fixed fees, according to research carried out by Co-operative Legal Services to launch a campaign against hourly rates in light of this week’s legal aid cuts.

More than half of those going through a divorce were priced out of the legal services they would have bought and felt they needed, new research has found, with nine out of ten people told by solicitors to take or leave pricing on an hourly rate.

A war of words has broken out between the Law Society of Scotland and Council of Mortgage Lenders over the former’s decision to ban joint representation of borrower and lender, subject to formal rule changes later this year.

The trend towards ‘unbundling’ legal services is gathering pace, with a Yorkshire law firm launching a ‘Pay as You Go’ service for family law clients who will no longer be eligible for legal aid after 1 April.