Practice Management

A new approach to contracts based on legally binding principles of conduct and comprehensive model terms has been put forward by a leading figure in the lawtech community.

Lawtech company Legl – set up by the team behind pioneering funding platform CrowdJustice – has raised $7m (£5m) in Series A funding.

A nine-year global project to uncover the root causes of the lack of gender parity at the most senior levels of the legal profession has been launched by the International Bar Association.

Men are increasingly being invited to participate in women lawyers’ networks, according to a report into gender-based organisations and a ‘toolkit’ on how to set one up.

Coventry University’s Law School has become the first faculty to form a collaboration with a fast-growing mentoring programme launched by a trainee solicitor at City giant Allen & Overy.

Eight graduate solicitor apprentices have started work at defendant firm Keoghs, one of the first law firms to offer this approach, as we round up a host of SQE and other training news.

Six entrepreneurs looking to develop lawtech start-ups have joined a new programme at the incubator MDR LAB, created by London law firm Mishcon de Reya.

Cambridge and London law firm Taylor Vinters is taking an equity stake in online legal services business LawBite as they collaborate to provide SMEs with international advice.

Since abolition of the common renewal date, practices have been free to choose when to renew their professional indemnity insurance. We estimate that around 30-40% now renew between March and April.

The managing partner of a South Yorkshire law firm has won his claim against the practice for both direct and indirect disability discrimination, as well as a failure to make reasonable adjustments.

The more innovative use of technology like artificial intelligence by unregulated providers of legal services is raising questions of whether there is a widening consumer protection gap.

Global law firm Jones Day has reportedly had 100 gigabytes of data stolen, with some of it appearing on the dark web, after a third party that provides it with file transfer software was hacked.

City law firms are partnering with the Social Mobility Pledge to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, with firms and chambers also signing up to the #10000BlackInterns programme.

Twenty law firms and seven comparison and review websites have signed up to a regulator-run pilot that will test how they can best work together to improve the information available to consumers.

The time has come for the Ministry of Justice to consider whether lawtech companies, along with other unregulated legal services providers, should be regulated, ACSO has said.