Month: September 2016
Why the legal industry shouldn’t wait for QASA
As reported in Legal Futures, the much delayed Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) – originally scheduled for implementation in December 2011 – is still showing no sign of movement. QASA has been described as “the only way” to protect all members of the public involved in criminal proceedings “at an upper level” but has […]
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Changes to CPD
The era of traditional CPD “points” requirements for both solicitors and barristers is drawing to a close, with new continuing practice development regimes being introduced for the next practice year. Whilst there has been plenty of notice of this (for solicitors, not so much for barristers), it’s understandable that many practitioners, particularly those operating without […]
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Confidently confidential
This article considers two recent developments relating to data protection and trade secrets: two sides of the same coin perhaps. Cloud computing and extra-territoriality The first development concerns the recent spat between the United States and Microsoft, not as previously an issue of antitrust compliance, but rather a question of privacy and data protection in […]
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Chatbots for customer service
Does your law firm find call handling a challenge? Do you sometimes find yourself losing out on leads because your fee earners do not have enough time to follow up on enquiries? Many solicitors struggle to find the time to respond effectively to new enquiries while still managing their workloads, especially when many of these […]
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IT security for barristers
Although written for barristers, the recommendations below would broadly apply to any lawyer practising without the support of an IT team. As a practising barrister, your working life is probably busy, hectic and mentally exhausting, and the thought of having to consider the security of your IT equipment is more than likely not one that […]
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Cloud-based software for lawyers
There are a large number of companies offering legal software to lawyers – around 100 at my last count. The software section of my website www.venables.co.uk/software.htm lists and describes them all, A to Z. As well as the A to Z sections, I now provide a section called “Cloud, Outsourcing and Hosted Systems” at www.venables.co.uk/outsourcing.htm. More […]
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Introducing the GDPR
Towards the end of 2015, the EU institutions reached agreement on a new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which will replace the 1995 Data Protection Directive, seeking to implement a stricter and more harmonised data privacy regime. The new GDPR, which was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 4 May 2016 […]
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