Market monitor

The furlough scheme should be extended for property businesses, like conveyancers, where income required to pay staff will not be available for months after work is undertaken once lockdown is lifted.

A solicitor specialising in intellectual property has described “waiting in the wings” for two years to close down her regulated law firm and reopen as an unregulated business.

The whiplash reforms have been delayed until April 2021 due to the coronavirus crisis, the Lord Chancellor announced today. This is the third time implementation has been postponed.

RBG Holdings plc is aiming to broaden its non-legal offering and reduce its reliance on the revenues of City law firm Rosenblatt, it said today as it announced strong results for the 2019 financial year.

NAHL – the listed company that owns National Accident Helpline – announced yesterday that it has furloughed a third of its staff amid a fall in personal injury enquiries.

Criminals are exploiting the coronavirus crisis and law firms may be more susceptible because of the financial pressures they are under, regulators have warned as we round up other key developments.

Most law firms have implemented a furloughing strategy, looking at reductions of up to 40% in headcount to survive the coronavirus crisis, while partners are reducing drawings too, according to a survey.

Week three of lockdown saw the start of a cash squeeze on law firms, with no money yet from the government, and predictions of a grim summer, according to research.

Many of the technologies and techniques that have been “forged in the heat” of the coronavirus crisis will usurp old ways of practising when life returns to normal, Professor Richard Susskind has predicted.

A North-East law firm that pitched itself as the future of criminal legal aid practice a decade ago by combining barristers and solicitors was formally wound up last month.