Practice Management

The Law Society has called on the government to allow firms to use the apprenticeship levy more flexibly than now to create new jobs and retrain staff as part of the support needed in the wake of Covid-19.

Workers from disadvantaged backgrounds are being left behind by the apprenticeship system, including in the law, with numbers slumping by more than a third since the apprenticeship levy was introduced.

The ground-breaking DoNotPay chatbot – which describes itself as the world’s first robot lawyer – is to ramp up its UK offering after securing $12m (£9.6m) in backing from Silicon Valley.

Security experts have highlighted email interception as the “weakest link” in firms’ defences against cybercrime in the property market.

A private equity company that last year bought two major volume conveyancing firms has now taken a minority stake in a solicitor-owned legal technology company for £1.5m.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is set to begin a multi-year project to increase understanding of why Black, Asian and minority ethnic students perform worse than white students.

A former employee of national law firm Shoosmiths – who won damages for harassment back in 2017 – has had a string of further claims thrown out, with a tribunal branding them vexatious.

Unregulated providers are leading the way with developing consumer-facing legal technology, showing that the way solicitors are regulated is “not an obstacle to innovation”.

It is not clear whether staff can refuse to come into work or decide to leave a workplace if they think it’s unsafe because of Covid-19, the Law Society has told law firms.

Lawyers who advised clients on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme are at risk of claims as the government looks to claw back payments to which recipients were not entitled.

A not-for-profit training institute for in-house lawyers is aiming to transform those often portrayed by other staff as “digital laggards” into digital leaders.

An employment tribunal has been ordered to reconsider the £47,000 in damages that it awarded to a paralegal subjected to foul-mouthed tirades by the senior partner of a London law firm.

The president of the Family Division has cleared the way for more remote hearings, including those where parents and children appear as witnesses, by revising the guidance for judges.

Most solicitors and their staff north of the border have experienced mental health problems, a major survey by the Law Society of Scotland and mental health charity See Me has found.

The Covid-19 crisis will not stop the introduction of the Solicitors Qualifying Exam in September 2021, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has said as it published the exam’s final design.