Practice Management

The legal services sector is to shed 13,000 jobs in the decade to 2027 – with a further 22,000 at risk if technology brings radical change to the workforce, research for the Law Society has predicted.

A start-up aiming to give home buyers access to all the information on their move via an app is set to launch a pilot with several leading software providers – and through them law firms.

The UK legal arm of big four accountant Deloitte has become the latest law firm to launch a tech lab to incubate lawtech start-ups.

A law firm made an unlawful deduction of wages when it took £1,700 from the salary of a sacked solicitor turned office manager to cover the cost of a training course, an employment judge has ruled.

Tech is a key element of growth in UK legal services, while investment deriving from market liberalisation and alternative providers increasingly linking up with law firms has strengthened the sector.

The combination of the new Standards and Regulations and the Solicitors Qualifying Exam “will drastically increase the supply of lawyers”, the European head of Rocket Lawyer has predicted.

Global law firm giant Reed Smith has launched a product that automates the legal bit of online competitions, with lawyers or non-legal consumers able to generate t&cs in multiple languages in compliance with local laws.

Law firms are “way ahead” of in-house lawyers in adoption of legal tech and the latter need to “grasp the nettle”, the chief executive of a start-up which helps corporate counsel manage their workload has argued.

Lawyers’ devotion to billable hour has stopped truly disruptive technology from changing the way legal services are delivered to the public, last week’s Legal Futures Innovation Conference was told.

Arbitration and online dispute resolution should be used when there are disputes about smart contracts, the Chancellor of the High Court has said.