Practice Management

A house in Kent is the first being sold using a blockchain network that connects conveyancers with estate agents and mortgage lenders.

There is near unanimity among the public that lawyers should have to demonstrate more actively than now that they remain competent throughout their careers, the Legal Services Board has found.

A solicitor who claimed she was not offered a job after completing her training contract because she was pregnant has lost her discrimination claim in the employment tribunal.

The Court of Appeal has rejected the claim that a man convicted of a sexual offence after a police officer posed online as a child was given inadequate legal advice.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers has had to intervene after two professional indemnity insurers offered firms cover that did not comply with its minimum terms.

The Solicitors Qualifying Exam will make it easier for people to qualify as solicitors but move the “bottleneck” to newly qualified roles, a leading academic and the training head of a major law firm have predicted.

The extent to which legal work can be reduced purely to administration and process has been overstated and in fact “lawyers are needed for all legal jobs”, Professor Richard Susskind has acknowledged.

Lawyers have been reluctant to engage with technology partly because law firm partners haven’t given junior staff enough time to learn how it can help them, according to a government-backed report.

A barrister has spoken about her “really positive” recent experiences of courts accommodating “the practicalities and balancing acts being carried out by those with children”.

The Master of the Rolls has hailed the launch of a universal structured data format for the creation of digital contracts as a “great step forward”.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers has announced a review of its professional indemnity insurance arrangements in light of a hardening market for cover.

The Supreme Court has provided a “wholly new legal roadmap” for professional negligence after its ruling last week in two linked cases, the Professional Negligence Lawyers Association has said.

A global law firm’s post-pandemic plan to compulsorily limit office attendance will stop women working remotely suffering from present colleagues receiving better assignments.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service has launched a pilot scheme that allows lawyers to manage and progress the initial stages of certain civil damages claims online.

A law firm specialising in data breach litigation has criticised Gateley for not keeping client data safe in the wake of the cyber-attack it suffered earlier this week.