Practice Management

The more law firms find out about the planned Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), the less positive about it they become, expecting that they will have to top up the knowledge acquired under the new route to qualification, research has found. The poll also found widespread ignorance of the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s planned overhaul of training.

Fees for conveyancing and lasting powers of attorney have fallen over the past two years, while they have risen for family work, a report by the Legal Services Board has found. It also revealed that only 18% of law firms publish prices for any of their work in these areas on their websites.

London law firm and alternative business structure Mishcon de Reya has invested cash in two of the six lawtech start-ups that its incubator, MDR LAB, chose from among a crowded field earlier this year. Mishcon also announced yesterday that it would run a similar competition in 2018.

Billy Bot, the ‘robot junior clerk’, is now managing up to 100 new instructions a day from solicitors and members of the public, agreeing fees, booking barristers, checking for conflicts and even making the coffee. The time the system saves has already meant that the clerks at Clerksroom have to work fewer hours than before, with no cut in salary.

Three quarters of law firms are still unprepared for the EU general data protection regulation which comes into force next May, potentially opening them up to large penalties, according to new research. It also found that one in five law firms admitted to experiencing an attempted cyber attack in the last month.

Leading defendant law firm Keoghs has launched an artificial intelligence (AI) driven service that cuts legal costs for insurer clients by enabling them to handle work that is currently done by its lawyers. Its “AI lawyer”, called Lauri, is initially for what are called “avoidable litigation” cases – generally standard, low-value claims.

DoNotPay – the chatbot that aims to make access to the law free – has received $1.1m (£840,000) in backing from leading Silicon Valley investors, and even some lawyers. DoNotPay is the brainchild of English-born student Josh Browder, who started the site as a teenager to fight his own parking tickets.

Thousands of small businesses are flocking to a purpose-built legal hub, operated by alternative business structure LHS Solicitors, to access online documents. Some 35,000 documents have been downloaded from the Federation of Small Businesses Legal Hub – provided by LHS on a white-label basis – since its launch last month.

A ground-breaking battle between lawyers and artificial intelligence has ended in a comfortable victory for AI. Lawyers had a week to predict whether real PPI complaints were upheld or rejected by the Financial Ombudsman, using their own resources and unlimited time, before AI got to work.

Efforts to recruit an initial 2,500 barristers to direct access website MyBarrister failed miserably, it has emerged in a court ruling that details an ongoing dispute with the recruiters charged with signing them up. “These were, as things turned out, demanding targets,” the judge observed.

Almost half the staff at SME law firms say their firms have been attacked by fraudsters within the past 12 months, a survey has found. At the same time, the research into how firms are responding to risk management and compliance found evidence more generally that firms are “turning regulation into a business driver”.

Law firms are facing a “pivotal moment” where they need to turn talk of improving efficiency into action, with those that are seeing the competitive advantage, new research has claimed. It said firms “appear to be in a holding pattern, pledging forward-looking action, while cleaving to traditional thinking”, such as hourly billing.

Singapore has begun marketing itself to UK law firms wanting to access Asia’s lawtech start-up community, as well as UK start-ups wanting to expand beyond these shores, with what it says in south-east Asia’s first lawtech accelerator.

Basic digital housekeeping like keeping software up-to-date and backing up data separately from your network will solve most cyber-security issues – with corporate espionage one issue law firms have to face – according to a former assistant director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Law Society has agreed a deal with a crowdfunding platform to connect solicitors with lawtech start-ups looking for investment. Meanwhile, a lawyer at a magic circle law firm told yesterday’s Legal Geek conference that while clients welcomed the idea of innovation, when it comes to the crunch they often chose old-style methods.