Practice Management

The Legal Services Board has come under unprecedented pressure to reject plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to introduce a centralised Solicitors Qualifying Examination. City lawyers, law lecturers and Welsh speakers have called on the LSB not to approve the application, while MPs asked for the decision to be postponed for six months.

A fifth of those buying leaseholds do not recall their solicitors giving them key information such as the length of the lease remaining, service charges and ground rent, according to research commissioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. But overall, conveyancing clients were generally happy with the service they received.

More than half of young legal aid lawyers are earning less than £25,000 a year, yet more than a quarter start their careers carrying more than £35,000 debt as a result of their education, according to a survey of lawyers in the sector. It found low salaries were a “significant barrier”, although the sector still held an attraction for idealistic recruits.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal has upheld the award of damages to a barrister whose application to continuing sitting as a part-time recorder beyond the statutory retirement age of 70 was refused, while a circuit judge’s was not. The original tribunal decided that he had been treated less favourably because he worked part-time.

The government’s insistence on pressing ahead with a ban on cold-calling by claims management companies (CMCs) that many argue does not go far enough will be put to the test today. MPs will consider the changes made during the committee stage of the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill and various further amendments put forward by the Labour opposition.

A law firm with offices in Italy and England has reached the end of the line in challenging a ruling that it was under a duty to warn British and Irish property investors of the risks of investing in a part of Italy associated with organised crime. The Court of Appeal upheld the decision and the Supreme Court has now refused to hear a second appeal.

Women solicitors are significantly less likely to seek partnership and twice as likely to cite work/life balance or stress as the reason than men, according to a career satisfaction survey. The survey also found that employers are responding to the need to retain valued employees.

Three-quarters (74%) of male lawyers believe there has been progress on gender equality in the legal profession over the past five years but less than half (48%) of their female colleagues agree, a global survey has found. It also said that unconscious bias was the most commonly identified barrier preventing women from reaching senior positions.

The judiciary has threatened to withdraw from the Online Court pilot – which could go public by the end of this month – if there are “any further false claims or data” about the project from Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunals Service. The pilot, for money claims under £10,000, could move from invitation-only to ‘public beta’ stage on 26 March.

Lawyers will be vital to high-end fintech deals even after blockchain transactions become mainstream, according to a solicitor at the forefront of innovating with cutting-edge technology. He was speaking after helping to secure a pioneering use of the distributed ledger to transfer financial securities.

MPs have expressed concern about the government’s “evident preference” for virtual and online justice over traditional, court-based models without the evidence base to justify it. They also said HM Courts and Tribunals Service has not done enough work on how those unable to use online tools will be supported.

A paralegal who was subjected to a “long accumulation of abuse” by the senior partner of a London law firm was the victim of harassment on the grounds of age and sex, an employment tribunal has found. However, most of the specific incidents cited did not amount to harassment because the paralegal received the same kind of general abuse that all staff did.

A bank that relied on inaccurate information supplied by its borrower’s solicitor should not have won a negligence claim against her, because it failed to carry out its own checks, the Supreme Court has ruled. It restored the ruling of the judge at first instance, who held that the bank did not act reasonably.

The latest ‘man versus machine’ contest, which pitted human lawyers against artificial intelligence technology, has shown the machine to be superior in both accuracy and speed. But the best-performing lawyers exceeded even the AI, although it was claimed that they did so in unnatural circumstances for a busy lawyer.

A Kent law firm was negligent for failing to advise properly on a mortgage and valuation report, but this did not cause a couple in Canterbury to buy a house suffering from subsidence, a circuit judge has ruled. He said it was not the firm’s duty to “advise about structural matters when there was a structural survey available”.