Practice Management

The High Court has struck out a negligence claim brought against a barrister peer for breaching an extended civil restraint order – only to then permit the claimant to issue a further claim form. Max Couper is seeking to sue both Lord Thomas of Gresford – the Liberal Democrats’ shadow attorney general – and Irwin Mitchell.

City law firm Clyde & Co has teamed up with computing students to undertake data analysis for clients, including predictions of the likelihood of disputes going to trial and potential litigation outcomes. Meanwhile, Bristol-based TLT has taken a share of a US artificial intelligence contracts review software supplier.

A firm of solicitors should have warned a client of the significant risk that a tax avoidance scheme would not withstand a challenge from HM Revenue & Customs, the Court of Appeal has ruled. The client ended up having to pay £11.3m to settle with HMRC and issued proceedings against his solicitors the same month.

Graduates from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds are half as likely to obtain pupillages as their white peers, research for the Bar Standards Board has found. A second report found that the Bar was still viewed as “an elite, white, male-dominated profession with long-established traditions”.

The Supreme Court is to review what needs to be proved when a solicitor is sued for failing to advise a client of a potential claim, in the latest of a raft of cases involving Raleys, the controversial but now defunct Barnsley law firm that acted for thousands on miners.

One in seven civil servants at the Ministry of Justice claim that they have faced discrimination in their job, and one in eight say they have been bullied or harassed. The figures from its annual “people survey” show that the department performs worse than the average across government on all measures.

Almost half of conveyancing clients complain of a lack of communication during the process, while two-thirds of conveyancers believe they keep consumers fully informed, a survey has found. Some conveyancers are finding ways of bridging the gap, with the proportion using online portals growing from 4% to 15% in three years.

The Land Registry has unveiled plans to use artificial intelligence in conveyancing and also publish data on conveyancers’ performance. It comes as a Legal Futures report – published today – highlights how the use of data is set to change commercial conveyancing and the law firms which do it.

The courts need to “move fast” to develop online dispute resolution and other forms of speedier dispute resolution, “before the millennials lose faith in the way the older generation is content to deliver justice”, the Chancellor of the High Court has warned. He also said that technology that aimed to forecast the outcome of disputes was “very useful”.

A lawyer has launched an artificial intelligence-backed (AI) chatbot that powers what he calls the ‘Law Firm Without Lawyers’, initially aimed at consumer and tax law but shortly to be extended to domestic violence. Ailira is short for Artificially Intelligent Legal Information Resource Assistant.

Up to 70% of the law can be carried out by robots and all legal documents will be automated within a decade, according to the student entrepreneur who created the ground-breaking DoNotPay chatbot. He painted a picture of the future in which voice-activated chatbots would assist litigants-in-person and online courts would interact with chatbot

All of the 3,000 law firms accredited under the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme need to ensure they are not using in their own marketing the society’s description of the scheme that was yesterday ruled to be misleading, it has emerged.

Law Society advertising of its Conveyancing Quality Scheme “misleadingly exaggerated the membership requirements” to make it sound like the accreditation process is more rigorous than is actually the case, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled.

Unconscious bias in legal businesses is hampering their success, inhibiting a diverse and inclusive sector, and damaging the experience of women and minorities in the workplace, according to a report. Law firms need to train senior personnel to recognise their prejudices and introduce ‘disruptors’ – such as transparent work allocation practices – to prevent it.

City law firm Kennedys has called in artificial intelligence (AI) experts at Manchester University to help develop a new product to combat insurance fraud. The two-year project, co-funded by the government agency Innovate UK, will involve academics develop a new system based on the law firm’s databases.