Practice Management

A trainee chartered legal executive has spoken about how she is due to become a partner in a law firm less than 12 months after finishing her law degree.

A former partner at City firm Watson Farley & Williams has lost his High Court challenge to an arbitrator’s ruling that he must repay almost $68,000 (£52,000) to the firm.

National firm Simpson Millar has set up a team within its professional negligence department to handle potential actions against solicitors who failed to warn leasehold clients of damaging clauses.

Sheffield Hallam University has set up a standalone law firm so it can offer a law degree that incorporates mandatory work experience into every year of the course.

It is time to impose quotas on law firms for the number of women at both equity partner and management level as “years of talking” about diversity have failed to drive sufficient change.

The government has awarded grants totalling over £6.4m to 18 legal artificial intelligence and data analytics projects. The projects span the whole range of legal services, from City firms to a CAB.

A ‘robot mediator’ has been used to settle a dispute in the court system, for what is believed to be the first time. The online tool uses artificial intelligence algorithms in place of a human mediator.

Addressing the “lack of social diversity at the top of the legal profession” is an important part of improving judicial diversity, the Lord Chief Justice declared yesterday.

The Law Society’s toughened up code for completion, which comes into force on 1 May and reflects last year’s Dreamvar ruling, has divided opinion among conveyancers.

The legal dispute between City giant Linklaters and its former global business development director over his intention to discuss its “ongoing struggle… with women in the workplace” has ended.

A legal think tank and charity has launched an online employment rights advice service to fill a gap created by LASPO cuts in legal aid. It is starting in London with a view to rolling out nationally.

Law firms are under increasing pressure to adopt lawtech, with the rewards “potentially huge”, but the profession has still been slow to embrace systems that would radically change legal services.

Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on solicitors’ professional negligence is good news for both law firms and their insurers, and should stem the flow of claims about the under-settlement of PI cases.

The Supreme Court has overturned a Court of Appeal ruling that a negligent law firm should have to compensate its former client for failing to make a claim.

More than a quarter of corporations using artificial intelligence software to review contracts are doing so for Brexit-related reasons but the technology will not remove the need for lawyers.