Practice Management

Our regular round-up of snippets of news that you need to know takes in the Legal Ombudsman, conveyancing, financial difficulties for law firms, a shortfall of LPC graduates, the first divorce app, new members for LawNet, an LPO survey, the new Law Society deputy vice-president, and Expert Answers’ affiliate programme.

Proposals from the “timid” Solicitors Regulation Authority to reform the market for professional indemnity insurance are inadequate and will only worsen already fears for the future of the market, the Association of British Insurers has warned. However, the SRA’s blueprint has been welcomed by the Law Society and the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

A collaboration between Yourlegalrights.co.uk and top legal IT company Epoq Legal has set a benchmark in the delivery of online legal services and demonstrates the benefits of offering online legal services from both the consumer and supplier perspectives.

Too many lawyers believe they are “somehow immune” from the effects of technology that are profoundly impacting the rest of society, Professor Richard Susskind has warned. He also highlighted how the profession has embraced legal process outsourcing.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has radically reworked its reforms of professional indemnity insurance, delaying the end of common renewal for two years and kicking the question of compulsory cover for financial institutions into the long grass. Solicitors will also be liable to pay up to £30m of claims arising from the ARP during its final year.

QualitySolicitors is preparing to eject a member firm for failing to meet the network’s quality standards, its chief operating officer told the Legal Futures Conference yesterday. Law Society chief executive Des Hudson also questioned QS’s use of the word “quality” in the brand.

The Advertising Standards Authority has rejected a complaint from a Yorkshire law firm about QualitySolicitors’ launch television advert. Hull-based Williamsons Solicitors challenged whether the advert misleadingly implied that customer feedback was the only criterion for assessing whether law firms were suitable to join the network.

Legal Futures Associate TikitTFB has announced a strategic partnership with LegalDocs UK to provide an integrated digital dictation solution that combines speech recognition, document assembly and document management.

TV Edwards, a highly-respected London law firm with a national reputation covering publicly-funded and private work, has selected Partner for Windows from Legal Futures Associate TikitTFB to replace its current IRIS AIM Evolution system.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is weighing up whether evidence that the underwriting criteria used by professional indemnity insurers disproportionately affects black and minority ethnic solicitors amounts to unlawful discrimination, Legal Futures has discovered.

Law firms are needlessly wasting nearly an hour and a half drafting documents which could be completed in a third of the time, research has revealed. It said that on average law firms spent 86 minutes taking instructions and drafting each of the three documents assessed, compared to 26 minutes using Rapidocs Law Draft was 26 minutes, a time saving of 70%.

A large majority of law firms believe they need to devote resources to social media because clients will increasingly be influenced by the strength of their presence in the sector, according to a survey.

Legal Futures Associate Tikit, a leading independent provider of IT consultancy, services and software to law and accounting firms, has announced a new strategic partnership with QlikTech, a leader in user-driven business intelligence.

Legal Futures Associate Tikit has announced a contract with London law firm Sprecher Grier Halberstam LLP to provide all of its IT support and strategic consultation, as part of a fully managed service.

The Bar Standards Board last night delayed the introduction of an aptitude test for asprising bar students – which it had hoped to do this year – by 12 months. The test assesses analytical and critical reasoning, and fluency in the English language.