Blockchain. It’s been branded as the future of just about everything, and is soon expected to infiltrate all aspects of how we live our lives from banking, to tax returns to voting. But what is it, and how can it be used in property transactions?

It’s slightly tongue-in-cheek, but let’s see if we can design a business model that is doomed to struggle and which will ensure that we miss out on the profit and cash opportunities that come with providing high-value services at high prices in a near-monopoly situation.

Welcome to the new-look Legal Futures, refreshed and redesigned to be mobile optimised. We have run enough stories highlighting the importance of mobile optimisation, and we are finally practising what we preach.

The proposals by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for reform of compulsory professional indemnity insurance (PII) for solicitors in England & Wales include a reduction in cover to £500,000 (£1m for conveyancing) and exclusion from compulsory cover of the protection for commercial clients whose turnover is in excess of £2m. The proposals also include an aggregate limit of run-off cover of £1.5m (£3m for conveyancing). These limits include claimants’ costs. Leaving clients, solicitors’ staff, and those solicitors and staff who have retired from the profession, to the fate determined for them by those who decide how much cover to buy is like holding the passengers and crew on the Titanic responsible for their fate.

Call me pedantic, but I like precision when I’m talking about compliance. Recently, I was invited to speak at the Internet of Agreements conference on identity. I was giving the legal perspective, specifically around AML/KYC. Of course, identity from an AML perspective has a very specific meaning and purpose, and it became clear to me that, having been immersed in this regulated world for 13 years, that perhaps other people don’t appreciate the nuances of it. The terms CDD/KYC/AML are used interchangeably by non-AML people, to indicate that one approach to identity will work for all three, but it’s not that straightforward.