News

The government has rejected a call from the legal profession that partners in alternative business structures should have to disclose all convictions and cautions, even if spent. But the SRA is still on track to start licensing ABSs in early 2012.

The law firm behind Legal365 – the online legal service that is set to expand into a chain of city-centre high street shops – last night received the Law Society award for excellence in innovation. Last Cawthra Feather was recognised for a service that is “ready to compete in the new emerging legal services market”.

National law firm Russell Jones & Walker is planning to extend its personal injury brand Claims Direct into other areas of law, the firm has revealed. It is looking at areas such as employment and family law, wills and possibly conveyancing.

Big brand entrants to the legal market will have a “huge advantage” because of their vast client databases, the Chief Legal Ombudsman has warned. Adam Sampson said new entrants have an acute awareness how to utilise their existing clientele.

At least seven major brands will be launching high-profile campaigns to enter the UK legal services market in the next year, it has been revealed. Meanwhile, an investor is to assist a claims management company acquire several law firms.

A solicitor has launched a groundbreaking website that provides people charged with motoring offences a free online diagnosis of their case, backed up by the option of instructing a barrister to represent them at the hearing at the click of a button, Legal Futures can reveal.

There are a range of “practical and policy problems” with banning referral fees, a leaked Ministry of Justice memo has admitted. The document was revealed at yesterday’s Legal Futures conference by Andy Wigmore of the Claims Standards Council.

There is “no scintilla of doubt” that the Jackson reforms will be implemented but “twitchy solicitors” may play into the hands of civil servants by charging lower success fees – or even no success fees at all – as a result, a leading costs expert has said.

The legal education and training review, commissioned by the three main frontline legal regulators in November 2010, may not produce its final report until some point in 2013, it has emerged. Meanwhile, the academic body contracted to provide research has shut down, but the work will continue.

Bigger law firms are embracing social media but then failing to engage in two-way communications through it, new research has found. The survey found that nearly half of the firms prohibited staff from accessing social networks from work, even though clients were keen to interact that way.