Month: September 2010
The new UK legislation service
Since late July we have a shiny new official home of UK legislation at legislation.gov.uk. In due course this will completely replace the two current legislation services at OPSI and the Statute Law Database. At present some functionality currently available on the Statute Law Database is not yet available on legislation.gov.uk, including full content search, […]
Read More
QualitySolicitors – the brand
There can be very few solicitors unaware of the arrival of the QualitySolicitors brand on the legal landscape. With strong colours, launch parties, and snazzy advertising, they have made an immediate impact on the High Street. A change of plan Last year I wrote an article about QualitySolicitors (QS) as part of a series on […]
Read More
Discussion groups online – where is everyone?
I like the LinkedIn group for the Law Society Gazette. It’s a forum for lively debate between solicitors of every background and point of view, about any legal practice-related issues they feel like airing. It attracts, mostly, genuinely interesting and useful contributions. There’s never been anything quite like it (the letters page of the Gazette […]
Read More
ABS – not as simple as ABC
How did we get here? In July 2003 the Department for Constitutional Affairs (as it was then known) published a report entitled “Competition and Regulation in the Legal Services Market”. That paper was a response to a consultation about competition in the legal profession published by the Office for Fair Trading in March 2001. Annexed […]
Read More
Blogging for law firms
In all the recent excitement over the three famous brand options, we sometimes forget that blogs started it all; equally, we can confidently predict that if unforeseen disasters were to befall social networking, blogs would be the last ones standing. As before, this post will look at the use of blogs in the enterprise context, […]
Read More
Webcasts and CPD
In the current financial climate and increasing pressure on training budgets, lawyers have to look at more cost effective ways of keeping up to date with legal developments. Gone are the days of getting the nod from the senior partner or manager for a trip to London to attend a face-to-face course with a three-course […]
Read More
Webinars and CPD
Back in early 2006, my barrister friend Daniel Barnett ran a telephone seminar on employment law and was struck by how popular it proved to be. This gave him the idea to set up a business delivering CPD training online and from there the two of us decided to collaborate on setting up CPD Webinars. […]
Read More
Hosted systems – user comments
(with Bill Kirby) This is a follow up to our article in the last issue where we reviewed which legal practices are using hosted practice management and other hosted applications. Over the past 2 years, we have generally advised all clients reviewing their IT that they should at least explore the option of using some […]
Read More
Freemium? – pah!
I would like to see the back of the word “freemium” – it’s ugly, contrived and smacks of an in joke. More importantly, it does not describe anything new or concrete. The fundamental concept underpinning a “freemium” service – something offered for free to get someone to pay for something else – is as old […]
Read More
