Practice Management

Small law firms have been saving up to 25% on their indemnity insurance premiums following the arrival of a new insurer from Qatar, broker Lockton has said. Brian Boehmer estimated that firms had saved on average around 10%.

ReviewSolicitors, the legal review website launched last month, has recruited 300 law firms as premium subscribers through a deal with a leading case management provider. It means clients would automatically be offered the chance to post reviews while ReviewSolicitors would know they were genuine clients.

Some 60% of conveyancing firms refuse to give fee quotes over the phone and, whether they do or not, the majority then fail to follow-up with their prospective client, ‘mystery shopper’ research has revealed.

A company set up by a senior solicitor to be a member of his firm’s limited liability partnership can be the victim of age discrimination, the president of the Employment Appeal Tribunal has ruled. It is believed to be the first discrimination case brought by a company.

At a time when “the cost of legal services has generally been allowed to rise to unsustainable levels”, lawyers and the clients need to reconnect the four key ingredients that go into the purchase of legal services – cost, price, value and relationship – Professor Stephen Mayson has argued.

The increase in advertising legal services is having a negative effect on the justice system, according to a survey of 1,261 members of the public. There were similar findings in relation to the growth of ‘no win, no fee’ cases.

City solicitors have outlined their deep scepticism about plans by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to reform professional indemnity insurance rules, warning that “the solicitor brand should not be placed at risk” without very good reason.

Consumers using ‘unbundled’ legal services generally report a positive experience and it has the potential to widen access to justice, groundbreaking exploratory research has found. However, it made clear that other solutions were also needed to address the legal needs of “more vulnerable consumers” unable to unbundle.

A High Court judge has ordered the take-down of pages of an anti-solicitor website that contain defamatory statements about a law firm, after a litigation opponent alleged their publication was “evidence that the firm was disreputable”.

Global law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner will be using artificial intelligence across every practice area within three years, the man credited with bringing AI technology to its real estate department has predicted.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s plans to relax the rules around accountants’ reports have been formally approved by the Legal Services Board, meaning that around 1,000 more law firms will not have to submit one in future

Legal services disruptor Axiom has claimed to be “the undisputed market leader in all things contracting” after launching an online platform that enables businesses to handle routine contracts with little effort.

Paul Philip, chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, has hit back after the SRA’s latest indemnity insurance plans were fiercely criticised by the Law Society. He said the regulator had made “absolutely no new recommendations”.

Radical changes are being considered for government contracts for digital services, including removing “negative language”, limiting sentences to two lines and hosting boilerplate clauses online. Use of visual images is also being encouraged.

A free version of conveyancing portal Veyo, called Free2Convey, is to be launched by the Legal Software Suppliers Association (LSSA) at the end of this month. Matt Lancaster, chair of the LSSA, said he hoped as many law firms as possible would use it.