Tag Results
Exclusive: Stobart Barristers reaches the end of the road
Thursday, 15 May 2014Stobart Barristers – the most controversial new business of the Legal Services Act era to date – will no longer provide legal advice to the public, Legal Futures can reveal.
Tags: ABS, Alternative business structures, criminal law, legal aid, Stobart
Posted in Alternative business structures, Latest news, Market monitor
Dropping the ball?
Monday, 3 March 2014In a guest post, Adam Makepeace, the practice director of leading criminal law firm Tuckers, explains why he was elated (kind of) by the government’s legal aid announcement last week but that the Lord Chancellor needs to level the digital playing field between firms if the market is somehow to come to his rescue.
Tags: legal aid
Posted in Blog
MoJ pushes for crime market consolidation despite its own research warning over speed of change
Friday, 28 February 2014Many criminal law firms will have to merge, or enter into joint ventures, or form alternative business structures, to survive, after the government announced yesterday that it would push ahead with legal aid reforms that are predicated on market consolidation.
Tags: legal aid
Posted in Alternative business structures, Latest news
Government opens new front in criminal legal aid fight by bulking up Public Defender Service
Tuesday, 21 January 2014The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is bulking up the Public Defender Service (PDS) “as a way of breaking the dispute with advocates over fees”, it was claimed yesterday. The MoJ said last year that it viewed the PDS in part “as a safeguard against market failure”.
Tags: legal aid
Posted in Latest news
Low Commission eyes up client account interest to help prime new national legal fund
Friday, 10 January 2014The government was yesterday urged to take a ‘no holds barred’ approach to obtaining support and funds for overhauling social welfare legal support, including pro bono help from law students and cash from interest on solicitors’ client accounts.
Tags: legal aid, Low Commission
Posted in Latest news
Criminal solicitors’ chief tells ‘scab’ firms to “hang their heads in shame”
Thursday, 9 January 2014The chairman of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association has hit out at law firms that sought to take advantage of their rivals’ absence from court during Monday’s morning of action against the legal aid cuts.
Tags: criminal law, legal aid
Posted in Latest news
Criminal barristers’ earnings – a new low in government strategy
Thursday, 9 January 2014After what seems an all too brief season of peace and goodwill, hostilities between the government and criminal lawyers have rapidly resumed, and appear to have taken a more sinister turn. With a strike by criminal barristers across England and Wales looming, the Ministry of Justice chose the first working day of 2014 for a not-so-subtle pre-emptive ‘strike’ of its own by releasing figures detailing the earnings of criminal barristers in 2012/2013.
Tags: criminal law, legal aid
Posted in Blog
Law Society SGM: battle lines drawn as at least 600 solicitors head to Chancery Lane
Monday, 16 December 2013An unprecedented wave of specialist criminal law solicitors is set to converge on Chancery Lane tomorrow, when the special general meeting to debate a motion of no confidence in the Law Society’s handling of government legal aid reforms is held.
Tags: criminal law, Law Society, legal aid
Posted in Latest news
Crime firms’ “bad treatment” of clients will only get worse with cuts, study predicts
Tuesday, 10 December 2013The academic who earlier this year angered criminal defence practitioners when he revealed research suggesting the firms he shadowed had mistreated their clients, has warned that the legal aid cuts planned by the Ministry of Justice will only make things worse.
Tags: Client care, legal aid
Posted in Client care, Latest news
SRA to investigate impact of legal aid cuts on crime firms
Thursday, 5 December 2013The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to investigate the likely impact of criminal legal aid fee cuts on the viability of law firms amid warnings that the cost to the profession of collapses could spiral.
Tags: interventions, legal aid, Solicitors Regulation Authority
Posted in Indemnity insurance, Latest news, Solicitors
Blog
Five key issues to consider when adopting an AI-based legal tech
As generative AI starts to play a bigger role in our working lives, there are some key issues that your law firm needs to consider when adopting an AI-based legal tech.
Bulk litigation – not always working in consumers interests
For consumers to get the benefit, bulk litigation needs to be done well, and we are increasingly concerned that there are significant problems in some areas of this market.
ABSs, cost and audits – fixing regulation after Axiom Ince
A feature of law firm collapses and frauds has sometimes been the over-concentration of power in outdated and overburdened systems of control.
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