Practice Management

City law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner has launched Streamline, a “process improvement service” designed to cope with the legal challenges of big construction projects and complex or high-volume commercial litigation.

Firms that have not secured professional indemnity insurance have until tomorrow to notify the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Despite the abolition of the single indemnity renewal date last year, 1 October remained the deadline for more than 90% of law firms.

East Midlands firm Nelsons has launched Fusion Legal, a new regional support network, following West Midlands firm FBC Manby Bowdler, which launched Hub.Legal this summer.

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) is to launch a complaints portal this month that will enable lawyers to manage all of their contact with the organisation online. LeO will also encourage consumers to manage their complaint through the portal.

Legal entrepreneur Brad Askew has relaunched a property website for landlords, which attracts up to 600,000 unique visits a year. The Tenancy Agreement Service is aimed particularly at the 78% of Britain’s 3.5m private landlords who only let one property.

A law firm has won an injunction against a former client who set up websites about the firm with its name in the URL, after the High Court deemed his actions to be harassment. The injunction also covered Rick Kordowski, who ran the infamous SolicitorsFromHell.co.uk website.

Lawyers2you, the shopping centre-based marketing brand previously owned by failed Birmingham firm Blakemores, has been resurrected and relaunched with the first two stands open for business this week, Legal Futures can reveal.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has proposed scrapping the compulsory management course that all solicitors are required to undertake within three years of qualification.

The work to develop the Slater & Gordon brand in the UK has made it one of the three best-known law firms in the UK, with one in 10 consumers recognising its name, the firm has told shareholders.

A fifth of law firms admit to providing a substandard service at some point in the past year, with extra training for staff the common response, Solicitors Regulation Authority research has revealed.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority will not introduce specific rules to deal with the upcoming legislative ban on personal injury law firms paying inducements to claim, but has pledged to take “strong enforcement action” if firms breach it.

The Legal Services Consumer Panel has called into question the existing minimum indemnity cover limit of £500,000 for barristers and called for more research before the limit was extended to firms regulated by the Bar Standards Board.

A Walsall law firm has successfully appealed an employment tribunal ruling that a paralegal had been unlawfully harassed because she was Polish.

Leading marketing collective First4Lawyers said today that it has seen a clutch of larger personal injury (PI) firms return to its panel in recognition of the need for scale to compete effectively in the market.

A paralegal who took sensitive information from his employer when moving to a rival law firm was convicted of a criminal offence under the Data Protection Act this week.