Practice Management

Large law firms are focusing more on partner performance, new research has found, with a greater share of profits for those who perform well in the current financial year, but demotion for those who do not.

Lawyers are more pessimistic about the future jobs market than other professionals, despite their salaries and opportunities holding up “unusually well” since the start of the recession, a survey has found.

A large majority of partners at mid-sized law firms believe their practices need to grow by at least a third over the next three to five years to remain competitive, with many open to the idea of external investment, a recent survey has shown.

Professional indemnity insurers will have to leave quotations open for at least five days and provide information about their credit ratings under plans being considered by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Voiding policies is also back on the agenda.

Ofcom has found ITV in breach of its code for allowing TV personality Amanda Holden to promote QualitySolicitors on the day she launched its tie-up with WH Smith. The network broke the rules on promoting services and on giving them undue prominence in programming.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to roll out supervision of large City and national law firms through relationship management after a successful pilot. The year-long pilot also highlighted outsourcing as an issue to which the SRA needs to pay particular attention.

Our regular round-up of news you need to know includes the appeal court quashing an ILEX disciplinary ruling, delays for solicitors renewing practising certificates, a survey of young drivers on referral fees, a survey finding support for outsourcing and much more besides.

The law firm behind Legal365 – the online legal service that is set to expand into a chain of city-centre high street shops – last night received the Law Society award for excellence in innovation. Last Cawthra Feather was recognised for a service that is “ready to compete in the new emerging legal services market”.

National law firm Russell Jones & Walker is planning to extend its personal injury brand Claims Direct into other areas of law, the firm has revealed. It is looking at areas such as employment and family law, wills and possibly conveyancing.

Big brand entrants to the legal market will have a “huge advantage” because of their vast client databases, the Chief Legal Ombudsman has warned. Adam Sampson said new entrants have an acute awareness how to utilise their existing clientele.

Bigger law firms are embracing social media but then failing to engage in two-way communications through it, new research has found. The survey found that nearly half of the firms prohibited staff from accessing social networks from work, even though clients were keen to interact that way.

Going it alone in the new legal world “is simply a drawn-out closing down”, a leading law firm consultant has warned – while another has told law firms not to overlook “the power of the solicitor brand” when rushing to align themselves with national brands.

Legal education and training are unfit for purpose, causing lawyers to fail to meet the needs of clients and leaving the profession exposed to rival market entrants filling the gaps, according to Professor Stephen Mayson.

Just 53 law firms have failed to find professional indemnity insurance and so entered the assigned risks pool (ARP), provisional figures have shown. At the same stage last year, 409 firms had entered the ARP. Firms still have a month in which they can find secure insurance and backdate it to 1 October.

Pearse McCabe of brand and digital agency Rufus Leonard explains how important branding will become in the post-ABS world and considers some of the key issues that traditional law firms need to look at in response.