News

The Bar Standards Board’s move into entity regulation raises questions about the future of the Bar as a separate branch of the legal profession and could even lead to a solicitor heading the Bar, a former Bar Council chairman will warn this evening.

Just 53 law firms have failed to find professional indemnity insurance and so entered the assigned risks pool (ARP), provisional figures have shown. At the same stage last year, 409 firms had entered the ARP. Firms still have a month in which they can find secure insurance and backdate it to 1 October.

Online conveyancing business In-deed has seen “encouraging” signs from the introduction of telesales staff to help convert quotes into instructions for its panel law firms, it has told the Stock Exchange. The company has had to alter its plan to operate solely online.

A solicitor will take his campaign against the Solicitors Regulation Authority for shutting down his practice to its front door on Wednesday with a protest outside of its Redditch headquarters. It follows the SRA’s failed attempt to strike out his High Court action seeking damages.

Pearse McCabe of brand and digital agency Rufus Leonard explains how important branding will become in the post-ABS world and considers some of the key issues that traditional law firms need to look at in response.

The number of solicitor applications for a grant of probate has fallen for the fourth year running, down 30% since 2006, although the drop slowed last year, indicating perhaps that greater competition in the probate market is making itself felt.

Almost a quarter of law firms in the assigned risks pool had already decided to close a week before the renewal deadline, while the Solicitors Regulation Authority has flagged up the “serious risk” of other firms practising without insurance.

Around 50 law firms in the north-west have signed up to a new scheme from Manchester practice JMW aimed at lawyer-to-lawyer referrals. Lawshare offers firms in the network a 7-10% profit share for every case referred to JMW.

An outsourced accident management scheme run by Ford UK to bypass referral fees and credit hire costs has found that just one person out of 180 customers who reported an accident proactively sought to make a personal injury claim.

QualitySolicitors has agreed an exclusive partnership with leading finance comparison website MoneySupermarket.com, while the network is to be promoted in the Bounty Packs given to all new mothers, Legal Futures can reveal.