Practice Management

If junior associates are “gradually culled” from law firms as a result of automation, the “entire reproduction of the legal profession could be jeopardised”, a leading academic has warned.

A successor practice application against a City law firm should be struck out, a High Court master has ruled, but only after the claimant has been given a chance to amend his claim.

The insurer of a negligent Italian law firm operating in London has been ordered to pay £3m in costs to the victims after the lawyers failed to pay up.

Legal comparison website The Law Superstore this week relaunched after spending more than a year switching to a simpler, lower-cost lead generating model.

MPs are to probe the access to justice implications of the £1bn court modernisation programme. The justice select committee will consider issues such as the increasing use of digital technology.

LexisNexis, working closely with the Civil Justice Council and others, is poised to launch the first of three projects to create digital tools for the advice sector, it has emerged.

UK/US giant Hogan Lovells is using computer simulations of legal practices to train new equity partners in how to run a law firm, it has emerged.

Only five out of 22 lawyers and staff who lost their jobs when Hull firm Ingrams collapsed were protected by the TUPE regulations when the firm was effectively taken over by an innovative ABS.

The Public Defender Service unfairly dismissed an employee who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after her work debriefing a murderer.

A top family law firm has been criticised by a High Court judge for exacerbating the conflict in a high-value divorce by issuing a Form A during a period when it had been agreed not to.

Barristers would be “well advised” to make proper provision for tax liabilities given the “episodic” nature of their income, a tribunal has cautioned after upholding a fine against a QC hit by legal aid cuts.

An AI-backed product that uses natural language processing to help not-for-profit agencies identify precisely the legal nature of a problem is set to launch next year.

Email will be replaced within five years by a more secure means of communication for law firms, an expert predicted this week. Meanwhile, the SRA is using behavioural science in its messaging.

Contract review business ThoughtRiver has been awarded funding from the government for a £400,000 development project to develop “thinking AI”.

Law firms must be able to explain “automated decisions”, including those involving artificial intelligence (AI), the Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned.