Practice Management

A law firm in Blackburn will next week launch a campaign to make legal services more accessible to deaf people as part of its efforts to become what it says is the only law firm in the country for the deaf and hard of hearing. Joseph Frasier Solicitors’ campaign is called “Representing your right to be heard”.

A new professional indemnity insurer has entered the market, targeting conveyancing firms of up to 10 partners. In a move that will be welcomed by a sector of the profession that generally has minimal choice of insurer, First Title Insurance has joined forces with INK Underwriting Agencies Ltd.

Law firms and chambers whose workforces are significantly at odds with the make-up of the wider profession can expect questions from their regulators, the Legal Services Board (LSB) has warned. The LSB today confirmed that it is pressing ahead with controversial plans to make firms and chambers survey and publish the levels of diversity and social mobility in their workforces.

The Legal Services Board (LSB), Law Society and Bar Council have thrown their weight behind a best practice code aimed at stamping out bias in granting internships and improving social mobility for disadvantaged students. Meanwhile, LSB chairman David Edmonds has criticised the idea of restricting access to training to deal with the oversupply of bar students.

Size, claims record and changes to the number of fee-earners are the factors that influence law firms’ professional indemnity insurance premiums, not practice area or ethnicity, Law Society research has found. A review of the 2010 renewal season found that smaller firms found their premiums going up the most, as did those with a claims history in the previous 12 months.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to crack down on indemnity insurers that restructure law firms’ cover so as to reduce their exposure to the assigned risks pool. The move comes despite the fact that an investigation of the practice is ongoing and has yet to reach a conclusion on whether the previous rules were breached.

Mid-market law firms are responding cautiously to the changing legal services market, with just 14% saying they are actively considering external investment and 21% anticipating a merger or major restructuring in the next year, according to new research.

Indemnity insurance premiums for law firms with no new claims and no significant change in circumstances are still set to rise 10% this year, a leading broker has warned. Predicting a “tough” 2011, Lockton also called for a “fundamental review of the whole conveyancing process”.

James Boyd-Wallis, account director at Legal Futures Associate Byfield Consultancy outlines recent guidance from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.

Some 138 law firms have closed after entering the assigned risks pool in the past two years, while solicitors who do not pay their ARP premiums are being pursued into bankruptcy, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has reported. Most of the firms (119) shut through an orderly wind-down, while 19 were closed by an SRA intervention.

Jane Ching, Reader at Nottingham Law School, outlines its experience of running the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s work-based learning pilot that offered a route to qualification as a solicitor for those working as paralegals.

Just eight applicants to the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme have been rejected, it has emerged. The number of applicants has now passed 1,000, of which 317 have so far been approved. But Law Society chief executive Des Hudson has told Legal Futures that the scheme’s credibility would not be judged on how many are rejected.

A groundbreaking scheme aimed at young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who are interested in a legal career is helping them with their university ambitions, new figures have shown. Students who have gone through the £3m Pathways to Law scheme are more successful in gaining a place at a top university than a comparator group that has not.

A sizeable slice of corporate lawyers is misunderstanding the fundamental drivers of client satisfaction, according to new research which also found that less than a fifth of general counsel have final choice over selecting external legal advisers.

Increases in tuition fees means the overall cost of a law degree is nearly £90,000 and only half of lawyers would have gone to university had it cost as much when they studied, a survey has found. Legal recruiter Laurence Simons argued that this shows UK universities are failing and need to adopt the controversial approach of the philosopher AC Grayling, who is setting up a new private university, and also embrace apprenticeships.