Practice Management

An online-only law school entered the market yesterday to deliver the new Solicitors Qualifying Examination, with heavyweight backing from leading academics and lawyers.

The pre-1992 universities achieve the best results in the centralised exams taken by students on the Bar Professional Training Course, it has emerged.

The head of the Criminal Bar Association has outlined her “grave concerns” about algorithmic technology that is being used in the justice system without adequate regulation.

Half of the judges in England and Wales will be women in fewer than 14 years, Lady Hale predicted this weekend, suggesting that Lord Sumption was wrong to says gender parity would take 50 years.

One of the barrister founders of a pioneering legal aid firm in the North-East was not an employee or worker and so cannot bring unfair dismissal and other claims, an employment tribunal has ruled.

A miner who lost the chance of compensation due to the negligence of his solicitors is entitled to damages because later evidence indicating that he was not eligible was irrelevant, the Supreme Court has ruled.

Blockchain and smart contracts were given a major boost yesterday, when the expert panel charged with giving the technology legal certainty declared they should be treated in principal as property.

A Supreme Court justice has called for the creation of an expert commission to act as “a sort of independent regulator” of algorithms, staffed by coding technicians, with lawyers and ethicists.

A solicitor, his law firm and the barrister they instructed have been granted summary judgment on a negligence claim brought against them by a banker fired for his work with boxer David Haye.

The Chancellor of the High Court has urged commercial lawyers to prepare for the disruptive impact of technology on the law, the legal system and legal profession before others “steal a march” on them.