The following items have been selected from Delia Venables’ “New” page. This article first appeared in Legal Web Watch February 2016. Legal Web Watch is a free monthly email service which complements the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers. To receive Legal Web Watch regularly sign up here.

Reviews of 2015 and advice for 2016, from key legal opinion makers

• Criminal Law – 2015 Case Law Review from ICLR covers the most significant criminal cases decided in 2015
• Review of immigration law in 2015 from Free Movement Immigration Law blog, Garden Court Chambers, edited by Colin Yeo
• 2015 round up – property disputes is an analysis of most important cases of last 12 months from Hugh James Solicitors.
• 10 human rights cases that defined 2015 from Jim Duffy, of UK Human Rights blog, 1 Crown Office Row.
• 7 New Year's resolutions for privacy pros from Eduardo Ustaran, Privacy and Data Protection expert at Hogan Lovells.

New Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) scheme for continuing competence

The Law Society has provided a set of FAQ's relating to the New Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) scheme for continuing competence. It answers questions like "What is continuing competence?", "How is this different from CPD?", "Who must comply" and "What do I need to do?".

Special offer from EuroCases until end of March

EuroCases is the most comprehensive collection available of national and European case law linked to EU law. It provides a complete document collection of EU legislation and case law of the Court of Justice interlinked with the referring national cases. It can be viewed with an interface in five languages: English, German, French, Italian and Bulgarian. It was developed and it is being maintained and continuously updated by the leading Bulgarian legal information provider APIS Europe JSC. You can take a free tour of the service on the Eurocases site (without registration), set up a full free trial or purchase the service with a 15% discount if ordered before the end of March.

Secure Document Exchange from Eclipse is proving popular with 50 users so far

SecureDocs is a secure alternative to emailing confidential documentation provided by Eclipse. SecureDocs does not transmit the documents – it sends an email message from Proclaim to the recipient, who then securely accesses an online portal to view images of the document(s). Only the intended recipient can view the documents as only they will have the necessary login details. Recipients can ‘accept’ documents (with a digital signature if they wish) or ‘decline’ them. The sender automatically receives a time-stamped notification back into Proclaim to indicate that the documents have been viewed and whether they have been accepted or declined. Additional workflow can be built in to progress the case onwards automatically, if appropriate.

Hotdocs is already a world market leader – and it goes on growing

HotDocs is the market leading provider of automated document generation software, with customers in 60 different countries and a user-base, globally, that exceeds one million. It is widely used within the banking, legal, insurance, public and corporate sectors. In 2015, revenue grew by 24%, with new products such as HotDocs Market publishing platform, released in the USA. And it all started (and is still partially based) in Scotland! And it also started, to a large extent, in the legal market.

Legal Landscape Report reviews the issues affecting the UK’s legal IT

A major report from Converge TS and Zylpha finds that Cybersecurity, Agility and the Digitisation of UK courts and online services are the key concerns for legal firms in the year ahead.

Cybersecurity is starting to take centre stage in the press. As law firms are under an obligation to protect client data by the SRA and the Information Commissioner’s Office, the processes for securing data and systems from cybercrime will be a practice priority in 2016.

Agility will also become increasingly important. As clients are demanding access to legal services anytime and anywhere, the ability to work from remote locations at times to suit clients’ needs becomes essential. This in turn will drive concepts like mobile working and BYOD.

You can see the whole report here.

Quill achieve national recognition as a good employer

Quill Pinpoint have achieved ‘1 Star’ accreditation for 2016 by Best Companies, the organisation behind ‘The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For’ lists. The ranking is based on the results of Best Companies’ national annual survey of almost 410,000 employees from over 1,300 UK-based companies who were invited to rate their employers on attributes such as leadership, management, personal growth, wellbeing and community involvement. Last year, Quill were awarded ‘One to Watch’ accreditation; this year it is ‘1 Star’ status. (What for next year, I wonder?) Full story.

Free Access to Law Movement (FALM) has a new website

Free Access to Law Movement (FALM) was set up in 2002. There is a list of more than 50 members on the site (all the important legal information sites around the world), a full declaration of the aims and purposes of the movement in 17 languages (a small part is shown below), notices of conferences and various papers and journals.

Here is an extract from the declaration:

"Legal information institutes of the world, meeting in Montreal, declare that:

• Public legal information from all countries and international institutions is part of the common heritage of humanity. Maximising access to this information promotes justice and the rule of law;
• Public legal information is digital common property and should be accessible to all on a non-profit basis and free of charge;
• Organisations such as legal information institutes have the right to publish public legal information and the government bodies that create or control that information should provide access to it so that it can be published by other parties.
• Public legal information means legal information produced by public bodies that have a duty to produce law and make it public. It includes primary sources of law, such as legislation, case law and treaties, as well as various secondary (interpretative) public sources, such as reports on preparatory work and law reform, and resulting from boards of inquiry. It also includes legal documents created as a result of public funding.

Delia Venables is joint editor of the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers. Follow her on Twitter @deliavenables.