Practice Management

The Ministry  of Justice has injected £2m into boosting the development of lawtech via a government-funded network that backs tech start-ups.

Apprenticeships offer significant benefits to both young people and their employers, allowing law firms to plan their staffing several years in advance, a conference heard last week.

Enhancing access to justice appears to be ancillary to the court modernisation programme rather than its central goal, MPs warned yesterday.

The EU is pumping in £4m to fund an innovation lab at a south Wales law school which will carry out research into artificial intelligence and other legal tech innovations.

Oxford University has been awarded a government grant of £213,000 to research the people rather than the technology behind the legaltech boom.

The profession needs to keep working to address unconscious bias, as “we have not yet reached the stage where a successful woman is accepted as the norm”, Dame Heather Hallett said last week.

An employment tribunal has rejected all the claims of discrimination, victimisation and whistleblowing made by a barrister who also acted as the chambers manager.

The buzz around distributed ledger technology, including blockchain, is much more than hype and the tech will eventually transform conveyancing and probate, a leading academic has indicated.

City clients will make allowances for a lawyer who has made personal health and taking steps to avoid burnout a top priority, a former corporate partner-turned-fitness entrepreneur has said.

A former senior in-house lawyer at Shell cannot rely on a leaked internal email or an overheard pub conversation in his discrimination claim against the company, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

Big law firms are more likely to introduce salaried partnership status if they have large numbers of women lawyers – but research finds no evidence that this is used to discriminate against them.

Lawtech start-ups in the UK are not addressing the needs of in-house corporate counsel, although investors will back them because the sector is viewed as less susceptible to a downturn.

Solicitors’ firms that adjust the way they present information to disabled people – and make explicit how they can accommodate their needs – will see the business benefits, a major study has found.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service has come under fire by lawyers giving evidence to MPs for failing to assess the impact of its court reforms and adopting a “carry on regardless” approach.

A partner at Eversheds Sutherland was found dead hours after being suspended from work for alleged sexual behaviour towards women colleagues at a Christmas party, an inquest heard last week.