Practice Management

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) today reopened the debate about whether the details of complaints against lawyers should be published, including their names, with a strong endorsement from the Legal Services Consumer Panel that they should. In a discussion paper that seeks views on how it should approach the publication of complaints data, LeO says a naming policy could benefit consumers and lawyers, but that there could be unintended negative consequences too.

The Law Society and broker PYV have today launched a scheme designed to assist law firms which are having difficulty securing professional indemnity insurance renewal terms by working to improve their risk profile.

Martin Gregory begins a series looking at three of the less well known/utilised on-line applications. In the coming weeks, he will concentrate on Squidoo and Hubpages – tools that can help promote your law firm’s visibility on the World Wide Web, but he starts with Foursquare, which he says is possibly the most intriguing and scaleable social media network to emerge in recent years.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is host a meeting between the Law Society, black and minority ethnic solicitors, and professional indemnity insurers in a bid to agree a plan of action to improve insurers’ equality practices. It was called in after the Law Society judged insurers’ response to examples of alleged discrimination in the 2009 renewal process to be “wholly inadequate”.

Fast-growing Birmingham-based Shakespeare Putsman has selected LawSoft as a unified platform for its three-way merger with Stratford upon Avon firm Needham & James and Nottingham’s Berryman. The merger catapults the practice firmly into the national top 80 with around 450 staff.

Legal process outsourcing has taken a further step forward in England and Wales with a trio of announcements – two of which are aimed at the personal injury (PI) market. Both PI initiatives are particularly aimed at helping insurers and brokers handle “low value, low treatment” claims before they progress into a legal process.

In the first of a two-part interview to mark publication of the updated edition of his book, The End of Lawyers?, Professor Richard Susskind tells Legal Futures Editor Neil Rose how the recession and the growth of legal process outsourcing are changing lawyers’ attitudes to change.

Law firms that fail to embrace “legal process management” will quickly lose out to new competitors, such as accounting firms, legal publishers and businesses fuelled by external investment, Professor Richard Susskind has warned. The legal IT and strategy guru has also criticised the approach of many large firms to making cuts during the recession.

Several new appointments at Legal Futures Associate Pilgrim Systems reflect the company’s solid expansion, fuelled by a raft of new business wins and continued growth from their existing client base.

Cheshire law firm Abney Garsden McDonald has been shortlisted for a major award in recognition of its development of a case management system in the field of child abuse claims.

Legal Futures Associate Solicitors Own Software has been on a recruitment drive following an increase in business due to the popularity of SOS Connect for integrated case and practice management among mid-tier firms.

Lawyers will have a maximum of eight weeks to resolve complaints before the Legal Ombudsman will agree to investigate, the new service has confirmed, but it may ask them why they did not deal with them even quicker.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders is investigating the case for making title insurance compulsory for all conveyancing transactions, it has emerged, as a Law Society committee said it should be looked at as a way to reduce solicitors’ professional indemnity insurance premiums.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has been forced “under duress” to approve a rule change under which solicitors will have to inform existing clients of their right to complain to the Legal Ombudsman, despite efforts to persuade the Legal Services Board to change its position.

Lees Solicitors LLP is a Wirral-based, multi-disciplinary practice employing over 100 staff at offices in Birkenhead, Heswall, and West Kirby. The practice recently chose the Proclaim Practice Management system from Legal Futures Associate Eclipse as a firm-wide replacement to its incumbent software. Eleni Kinch, professional support principal at Lees, discusses the practice, its reasons for IT investment and its strategy for the future.