Market monitor

Embracing online reviews can trigger a positive, service-driven culture change at law firms, the practice director of a leading West Country firm told last week’s Legal Futures webinar.

A multi-disciplinary corporate finance group set up by a Cardiff-based law firm has added accountancy expertise to its offering, while consolidator Metamorph Law has unveiled its latest acquisition.

A solicitor who won a female innovators award is to put her £50,000 cash prize to building an automated platform that will provide cost-effective legal support to start-ups.

Lawyers are set to work alongside recruitment consultants in a platform for self-employed professionals taking shape in the West Country that aims to build an internal marketplace.

Manchester-based JMW has accepted damages of £45,000 plus costs from rival law firm Hayes Connor that admitted plagiarising a letter drafted by JMW on 242 occasions.

Fast-growing Leeds firm Switalskis has acquired specialist medical negligence and personal injury practice Pryers from Pure Business Group, which only bought the firm itself five years ago.

This is set to be a “big year” for legal aid, a senior Ministry of Justice official has predicted, amid warnings of the heavy strain alternative advice sources are under.

Leading personal injury law firm NewLaw will charge clients up to 30% of their damages to handle small claims going through the new whiplash portal, it has revealed.

Law firms have been advised to remove many of their printers before staff returning to the office this summer from lockdown start using them again and increase costs.

Goodwill and co-operation between claimant and defendant representatives and compensators will be needed to overcome some of the problems the new whiplash regime throws up.

The former Counsel General for Wales has struck out on his own as a sole practitioner and embraced direct access, saying it is “bordering on Luddite” for barristers to ignore it.

The value of the UK legal services market remains unchanged at £36.7bn, with a slump in revenue during the first lockdown followed by an increase in the last quarter of 2020, a report has found.

The Bar Council has launched an initiative to help chambers “transition to a more sustainable way of working”, saving not just carbon emissions but costs too.

A consumer claims law firm in Liverpool that has doubled its headcount to 65 in 12 months despite Covid is set for massive expansion by trebling in size over the next two years.

A High Court judge has refused to grant a solicitor a permanent injunction to enforce undertakings made by the son of a client that he would stop making defamatory statements.