Practice Management

Two commercial solicitors are attempting to break into the online legal templates market with an ambitious strategy to expand into non-law professional services. So far Legalo has around 100 templates for sale and plans a further 250. Its website also has a find-a-solicitor type referral service.

A pioneering online court formally launched in China last week to handle internet-related cases, such as online trade and copyright disputes. Located in and for the e-commerce hub of Hangzhou – home of Chinese technology giant Alibaba – the Hangzhou Court of the Internet is said to be the first of its kind in the world.

The entrepreneur who developed a web-based contract checking service almost five years ago is to launch another venture along the same lines, it has emerged. Ralph Ehlers launched Check-A-Contract in 2012 and sold the website two years later, and has now gone live with contractreviewexperts.co.uk.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service is working with Microsoft to build a prototype for a fully virtual hearing, which will tested in October, it has emerged. The latest development in the £1bn modernisation of the courts and tribunals, it will pilot virtual case management hearings in the Immigration and Asylum Chamber.

Law firms still have a long way to go in dealing with enquiries from potential clients, with a failure to follow up initial contacts a particular weakness, mystery shopping research has found. In the most extreme example, not one of the 50 SME law firms that received a walk-in enquiry followed it up.

A High Court judge has dismissed a negligence claim against London law firm Farrer & Co in a case involving a client with a $300m (£231m) trust fund. A companion of the man argued that the firm had owed her a duty of care in relation to a £5m gift that the trustees had agreed to pay her but then stopped.

The team behind LawBot, the legal advice chatbot created last year by Cambridge University law students, is planning a live ‘lawyer v machine’ challenge similar to the one in which IBM’s Watson won the US quiz show Jeopardy. LawBot was relaunched earlier this week and has started signing up law firms keen to secure access to leads generated by the chatbot.

A law firm with offices in Italy and England has lost its appeal against a High Court 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 Law Society has condemned the Solicitors Regulation Authority over plans to allow workplace training for solicitors to take place in organisations without any solicitors. The society warned that the proposals could “seriously undermine” high standards.

City law firm Kennedys has launched what could become a new route to partnership for members of staff who can dream up ideas for tech products to help clients. Prototypes from the Ideas Lab will be developed in India, before returning home for completion.

A legal tech firm is open source its AI-based document analysis tool next month, in one of the first moves of its kind for the sector. Its co-founder said he believed that the smallest legal tech start-ups could be based on the tool and then “1,000 flowers can bloom”.

The proportion of law firms targeted by scammers has risen sharply over the last year, especially among larger firms, as has the number of practices taking out cyber-insurance, according to new research from the Law Society. The survey on indemnity insurance also showed that a significant minority of brokers continue not to disclose their commission.

City law firm Fieldfisher has invested in “game changer” technology that helps investors and start-ups conclude deals quickly online. SeedLegals describes itself as “the world’s first automated legal service for start-up funding rounds”.

A sole practitioner who did not have a client account and admitted using his office account “at times as a personal account” has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. The tribunal heard that Michael Healey, based in Liverpool, misappropriated over £31,000 of client money before going bankrupt.

An expanding team of more than 100 HM Land Registry lawyers dealt with 100,000 legal enquiries last year, although the organisation has stepped up digital reform efforts aimed at automating key parts of the registry’s work. For instance, the piloting of a digital mortgage service, part of a plan to enable paper-free legal deeds, will be widened later this year.