It’s been a buyer’s market in recent years for solicitors purchasing professional indemnity insurance (PII). But could that soon change? We canvassed the views of a number of experts to find out what 2018 might hold. For some law firms with good claims records, the benign picture of 2017 remains unchanged, with insurers offering a range of incentives, including 18-month contracts and additional cyber cover or lower run-off premiums, to encourage them to review their options earlier and go with them. However, problems far away from the UK legal sector could have an effect on how much solicitors pay for their insurance in future.

Last month, MPs on the justice select committee asked minister Lord Keen what would happen when the government went ahead with its plan to raise the small claims limit for personal injury claims (from £1,000 to £5,000 for road traffic related claims and to £2,000 for everything else). As it is a jurisdiction in which lawyers do not generally operate – because legal costs are not recoverable – who might help claimants navigate what can still be a complex process? His answer, surprisingly, was claims management companies.

On 25 May 2018, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force. That might seem like a long time, but that’s just over 100 days away at the time of writing. Actually, GDPR was adopted back in April 2016, May 2018 is the end of the two-year grace period. The GDPR brings with it a whole host of changes, and the penalties for non-compliance are higher than ever, either 4% of your annual turnover or £20m, whichever is higher. But how do you prepare? What do you need to change first? Where do you even start?

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency – a digital currency that uses cryptographic techniques to regulate the generation of units and to verify the transfer of funds. It is largely anonymous and unregulated, and underpinned by a digital ledger technology known as blockchain. In terms of the market, there is a limit of 21m Bitcoin that can ever be created. It is very narrowly held, with an estimated 40% of Bitcoin held by just 1,000 ‘investors’ and only a third having been traded in the last year. However, there are also a number of synthetic products through which one can gain access to Bitcoin, including contracts for difference, ETFs (exchange-traded funds) and, as of December, exchange-traded futures.

If, for whatever reason, software change is essential, we’ve compiled five questions to ask yourself and prospective suppliers to help you really assess your options and carefully research the marketplace before you switch over. The preparatory stage of your software swap project necessitates watching software demonstrations, meeting key personnel, reading contractual documents, asking this series of probing questions, and then evaluating your combined result.