Practice Management

One of Lord Justice Jackson’s own assessors – the Senior Costs Judge, Peter Hurst – has cast doubt on the judge’s recommendation that referral fees be abolished, it has emerged. The news comes ahead of two influential reports examining referral fees that are to be published next month.

Jim Watson, managing director of data destruction service Shred Easy, and Daniel Berke, a fraud solicitor at Lewis Hymanson Small in Manchester and London, look at data protection among law firms and discuss the recent decision to allow the Information Commissioner’s Office to levy fines of up to £500,000 to organisations which seriously breach the Data Protection Act.

No claimant personal injury (PI) law firm will exist in five years’ time if it does not have 20-30 fee-earners, a leading PI practitioner predicted last week. Richard Langton, managing partner in the Birmingham office of Russell Jones & Walker, said this would enable firms to open from at least eight in the morning to eight in the evening, and perhaps on Saturdays too.

Top law firms are outsourcing as much to elsewhere within the UK as they are to India and South Africa, new research has found. Litigation support was the most popular service, followed by knowledge management, legal process and secretarial/typing work.

Law firms currently in the assigned risk pool (ARP) have paid just 22% of their insurance premiums, while insurers are rapidly increasing the reserve for claims these firms may cause, it has emerged. The 262 firms currently in the ARP were liable for £7.5 million in premiums – both record figures – of which just £1.7 million has been paid.

The Law Society has told the 2,911 law firms which have their professional indemnity insurance with Quinn that they do not need to take action at the moment, despite a warning that they may have to seek fresh cover within four weeks of the company’s provisional administration being confirmed.

With the Legal Services Act reforms on the horizon, Colin Loth, Manager of Legal at international recruitment consultants Badenoch & Clark, discusses the impact the Act will have on the job market and talented legal professionals.

Research this week from Plan-Net showed that 42% of UK businesses are planning to roll out Windows 7 in the next 18 months. However, only 6% of the surveyed City organisations with at least 250 users have already installed Windows 7, while 24% are not thinking about rolling out Windows 7 at all and 20% have not decided what to do. This raises important questions about upgrading infrastructure and refreshing hardware which was skipped in the year of the credit crunch.

A majority of consumers expect good law firms to offer their services online in the next couple of years, a survey of over 2,000 people has shown. It also showed that nearly half of consumers would be more likely to choose a firm that offered online access.

The Provision of Services Regulations contain provisions as to the information which lawyers must give to clients and customers. Duncan Finlyson of Lawyers Defence Group outlines their implications

Duncan Finlyson of Lawyers Defence Group considers the implications of a recent Court of Appeal ruling that allows the court to reopen the decision to report suspicions of money laundering.

The Conservatives will move quickly if elected to consult on plans to consolidate all solicitor client accounts in one place and apply the interest that accrues to the legal aid fund, Legal Futures can reveal.

Lawyers should undergo five-yearly competence testing, as well as face peer review of the advice they provide clients, the chairwoman of the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said.

Jenny Jones, an accountant with years of experience in pricing legal services at City giant Linklaters, has joined law firm consultancy Jomati.

In the first entry into the PR and marketing section of this website, Alastair Moyes, a director at Legal Futures Associate Marketlaw, says ‘marketing’ encompasses far more than many lawyers think.