Practice Management

Quality of legal advice and service still trump cost when clients choose a lawyer, although certainty about price and a firm’s use of technology are increasingly important, according to a major survey of client needs being released at today’s Legal Futures conference.

The Legal Education and Training Review may end up “unbalanced or worse” because it has incorrectly identified its purpose, the president of the Supreme Court warned last night. Lord Neuberger also questioned the need for root-and-branch change.

Simplify the Law – a law firm franchise concept which launched last year – has reinvented itself as an online legal service that aims to help commercial lawyers repel new competition in the market, Legal Futures can report.

InjuryLawyers4u, arguably the UK’s leading solicitors’ marketing consortium, is opening up its panel for the first time in more than eight years. There are currently 43 firms on the panel, collectively spending millions on advertising the service.

Law firms should ensure that compliance officers for legal practice are closely involved in information security policies, a study has advised after finding that a majority of firms contacted had already suffered data breaches.

The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx) has formed a strategic collaboration with the College of Law to offer legal employers training options for all staff, from school leavers to fully qualified lawyers.

Greater competition for business has led to a small fall in the amount of money solicitors paid for their basic professional indemnity cover this year, figures from the Solicitors Regulation Authority show. New entrants captured more than 10% of the market.

The company that says it was the first in the UK to provide free online legal advice for both businesses and consumers is to launch its first law firm panel for referrals – although it will not charge for them.

The final discussion paper produced by the Legal Education and Training Review “lacks rigour and is therefore unhelpful” in concluding that the current system is unfit for purpose, the Law Society has said. But it strongly backed creating alternative routes to qualification.

Nearly 60% of top 100 law firms view mergers and acquisitions as a leading growth opportunity in a challenging legal services market – with the prospect of alternative business structures starting to snap at their heels, according to a prestigious benchmarking survey.

An attempt to ‘crowd fund’ £1.5m for the launch of what is claimed to be the world’s first live online pay-as-you-go legal advice service will begin this week. Quegal will charge users 60p a minute to receive advice from junior solicitors and paralegals.

The importance of law firms marketing to their existing client base has come through strongly from major new Law Society research that shows repeat clients are by far solicitors’ biggest source of work.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has been fined £120,000 after an in-house solicitor sent highly sensitive information about a child protection case to the wrong e-mail address, rather than the barrister for whom it was intended.

There is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to produce a “bold blueprint” for change in legal education and training, but “vested interests” are striving to water it down, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has cautioned.

Three-quarters of business law firms say that an online presence has been their single most effective tactic to generate new leads in the past year. The poll of 209 business-to-business law firms around the world found they are increasingly investing in their online activity.