Practice Management

All lawyers will have to give clients clear information about how to complain, and their regulators will have to monitor that it is done, the Legal Services Board has announced.

Just four law firms featured in the top 60 most visible websites returned when people searched legal terms used Google, research has discovered. An analysis of the 1.2 million searches for legal terms in February found Irwin Mitchell the highest-ranking law firm at 12th, followed by Merseyside personal injury firm Camps (21st), home counties firm Brethertons (48th) and Fentons, a PI firm in London and Manchester (53rd).

The Court of Appeal’s ruling in the Levicom case involving City firm Linklaters last week “will be of concern for City firms and their insurers”, a leading professional indemnity lawyer has warned.

File reviews are generally seen by law firms as something they must implement to ensure they comply but the benefits are so often overlooked, explains Jaunita Gobby of compliance consultancy Legal Eye

Though websites have a number of uses – marketing, PR, client services etc – that often demand regular redevelopment, the pace of change in the legal sector has slowed. Intendance’s Fast Fifty 2010 Update can reveal that only eight law firm websites that featured in last year’s Fast Fifty report have changed.

A rising tide of claims against solicitors and a huge increase in the number of firms falling into the assigned risks pool means law firms should prepare for a 10% jump in professional indemnity premiums this year, broker Lockton has warned.

The legal process outsourcing (LPO) market is set to triple in size over the next five years, driven almost exclusively by US and UK lawyers, it has been predicted. Research and analytics firm Evalueserve said the need to become more efficient because of the Legal Services Act and specifically alternative business structures “is expected to boost the LPO industry” in the UK.

Legal process outsourcing reached a new level today after City firm CMS Cameron McKenna signed a 10-year, £583 million deal with Integreon for its “middle office” services, which it claims is the largest ever deal in the legal market and has received the endorsement of Professor Richard Susskind.

The Financial Services and Markets Tribunal has upheld a Financial Services Authority (FSA) decision permanently banning a solicitor from working in any capacity in financial services and fining him and the FSA-regulated law firm of which he is senior partner, £400,000.

There have been various articles in the legal press recently stating that conveyancing services can only ever be judged on price. Now, I know that this is certainly not the case. I know many solicitors that still charge an incredibly reasonable fee for their services, yet I also come across many others that are constantly lowering their price simply to secure the instructions.

Paul Gilbert, chief executive of LBC Wise Counsel, argues that lawyers have been sucked into feeling the need to exceed expectations, when all clients want is for them to meet expectations. In fact, exceeding them could be bad for business.

Paul Gilbert, chief executive of LBC Wise Counsel, says that firms can help themselves out of the recession by focusing on six key areas of business development

A row is brewing between the Law Society and Legal Services Board over the wind-down of the Legal Complaints Service, Legal Futures can reveal. Law Society chief executive Des Hudson has told us that the LSB’s insistence that the LCS’s current performance targets stay in place as it heads towards closure, despite dwindling staff, is “unthoughtful and an error of judgement”.

The board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority today pushed ahead with reforms to the assigned risks pool (ARP) despite the threat of a legal challenge from the Black Solicitors Network. March’s “in principle” decision to close the ARP to new firms and halve the length of time firms can spend in it to a year was confirmed after the board considered a full equality impact assessment which concluded that both proposals had a potential adverse impact on race equality.

Nearly two-thirds of law firms saw their professional indemnity insurance (PII) premiums go up last year, Law Society research has found. The survey of 240 law firms also found evidence of “a growing divide in the PII market”, with smaller firms and black and minority ethnic (BME) firms finding renewal tougher than the wider profession.