Practice Management

The Legal Services Board has urged regulators and professional bodies to engage with comparison websites for the benefit of consumers, including providing access to their registers, Legal Futures can reveal.

Our regular round-up of news snippets features another acquisition by ABS-in-waiting Quindell Portfolio, a solicitor’s TV ad winning a Royal Television Society award, a firm donating referral fees to charity, and ABS compensation fund arrangements.

Many law firms have failed to ensure their websites can be read by mobile devices, while others have produced “horrendous” applications (apps) for smartphones in their rush to be seen at the cutting edge of technology, a report has claimed.

There has been a massive increase in people using Twitter to ask for recommendations of professional service providers in the last two years, with solicitors one of the most in demand, according to research conducted for Orange Business.

Six businesses – including a law firm – are battling for control of a new .law domain that is set to become available as the body that co-ordinates Internet addresses opens up the market radically. There is also competition for the generic top-level domains (gTLDs) .lawyer and .legal.

The impending ban on referral fees in personal injury could result in a “steep increase” in the number of financial failures amongst small law firms – but may not actually discourage spurious claims – the Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned.

The only winners in the online legal documents business are those supplying services to the likes of law firms, financial institutions and trade associations – rather than selling them directly to the end-user – new research has found. It warned that engineering online legal documents is not an end in itself.

There has been a surge in large law firms paying partners bonuses over recent years along with distinct shifts in the way they compensate partners more generally and away from lockstep, new research has revealed.

Our regular round-up includes strong backing for intellectual property ABSs, Eddie Ryan leaving Co-operative Legal Services, a new digital copyright licence for law firms, an “unacceptable” lack of transparency over PII commissions, and a warning that law firms are being targeted by online espionage.

The Internet revolution has “yet to reach legal services”, new Legal Services Board research has found, meaning consumers jump at the idea of an ‘official’ online resource to help them resolve their legal issues.

A “disruptive” services procurement platform that allows small and medium-sized businesses to put out tenders to an expert community and manage them, all via the cloud, is set to enter the legal market.

Fifteen solicitors have had sanctions imposed by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal – including indefinite suspensions – for failing to pay the premiums demanded while their firms were in the assigned risks pool, with 15 more still to face the tribunal.

The Legal Education and Training Review should lead to alternative routes to qualification through a modularised and work-based approach, the Law Society has said. It comes as Professor Stephen Mayson has expressed concern that the review is in danger of being subsumed by vested interests.

Lawyers’ legal education and training should be aimed at the specific activities they will be authorised to practise rather than at achieving a particular title, the Legal Services Consumer Panel has urged.

The minimum salary for trainee solicitors will be scrapped on 1 August 2014, the board of the SRA decided yesterday, saying it is not the job of a regulator to control wages. Firms will be required to pay the national minimum wage of £6.08 an hour.