Practice Management

Lawyers are quick to embrace new technology which is seen as essential to their everyday working lives, research has suggested.

Solicitors Regulation Authority plans to exclude financial institutions from the requirement for compulsory professional indemnity insurance will drive some conveyancing firms out of business, the Law Society has claimed. The longer-term move to remove work for all commercial clients from the scope of the minimum terms and conditions of cover would be short-sighted, it adds.

Lawyers working alone in ‘silos’ present serious potential risks to law firms, but limiting partners’ autonomy can harm your practice’s bottom line, a conference heard last week.

Allowing the exclusion of claims by financial institutions and an end to every law firm renewing its professional indemnity insurance (PII) on the same day and are at the heart of Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) plans to shake up client financial protection arrangements next year. In a consultation being published today, the SRA also floats the idea of removing all corporate clients from the scope of compulsory PII cover from October 2012.

The Will-U-Wait service launched earlier this year by Thursfields LLP is a very public example of the type of innovation that will help law firms thrive in a post-Legal Services Act landscape. The service enables clients to have individually tailored wills produced within an hour of the end of their first appointment. It is a premium service designed to meet urgent needs or help those who do not have time for multiple trips to their solicitors.

Leading personal injury expert Chris Fry has chosen the Proclaim case management solution from Legal Futures Associate Eclipse for his new South Yorkshire practice, Unity Law.

Lawyers have warned the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) that some clients will end up unrepresented if he adopts a complaints process that involves ‘naming and shaming’. Fear of reputational damage would have a chilling effect on taking on clients perceived to be ‘risky’ and adversely impact on lawyers whose social conscience led them to offer help, they said.

The High Court has ordered a solicitor to hand over client files to a mortgage lender despite his argument that those parts of them relating to the borrowers were covered by legal professional privilege. The judge ruled that express agreements between borrower and lender in each case overrode the right to privilege and confidentiality.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is set to launch a “thematic review” of legal process outsourcing next year, Legal Futures can reveal. The review would seek to identify whether there are any particular issues or risks that require changes to the current regulatory requirements or whether certain outsourcing arrangements need particular attention in the supervision process.

Pickering & Butters has selected SOS Connect from Legal Futures Associate Solicitors Own Software for integrated case and practice management.

Kent-based law firm Thomson Snell & Passmore has selected K-Cloud and Legal Futures Associate Pilgrim Systems to provide all of its business critical applications.

A former fixed-share partner at south-coast law firm Lester Aldridge has lost his appeal against a ruling that he was a partner and not an employee in the limited liability partnership and so unable to claim unfair dismissal.

Professional indemnity insurers are to provide guidance for solicitors on the way the risk they pose is assessed as part of a push to ensure there is no discrimination in the renewal process. Following a meeting called by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Association of British Insurers also agreed to work with its members to review their proposal forms and the underpinning criteria used to assess risk, and review and report on the equality and diversity work undertaken by their members.

A company that runs two law centres has become one of the first two organisations ever to be fined for data protection breaches, after personal details of 24,000 clients were lost when an unencrypted laptop was stolen. A4e, a ‘social purpose’ company that jointly manages the Hull and Leicester community legal advice centres, was fined £60,000 by the Information Commissioner.

City law firm Herbert Smith has eschewed offshore outsourcing to set up a document review operation in Belfast. The first firm to establish a UK base for this kind of work, Herbert Smith said it was seeking to take advantage of the “significantly lower case base” in Northern Ireland and the high-quality pool of legal talent there.