Year: 2018
The case for offering free legal advice – in 2018
Long, long ago (2012) I wrote an article on this topic for the Newsletter and asked firms who had said that they were willing, in principle, to give some free initial legal advice, whether they thought it was worthwhile. Broadly, most of them did. You can read this article at http://bit.ly/INL1201venables. This year I again […]
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Open data: free to use and republish
In the last issue we looked at the concept of open law; we should probably now take a step back and consider what is meant by open data. Open data is the idea that some data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or […]
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Why have multiple websites?
Businesses large and small often use more than one website, for various reasons. We take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of this approach and its impact on your SEO efforts. Businesses with multiple websites come in several forms. They might be massive international companies, where the separate domains serve totally different business functions. […]
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Government surveillance
There are many different facets to an Orwellian dystopian society (in which, some may argue, we already live) where privacy no longer exists and Big Brother is watching everyone. Some of the culprits are data mining and tracking used by the tech giants for profiling internet denizens in order to realise lucrative profits from highly […]
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Publications and blogs
The Internet, Warts and All: Free Speech, Privacy and Truth, by Paul Bernal, Senior Lecturer in Information Technology, Intellectual Property and Media Law at the University of East Anglia, seeks to explain the internet information ecosystem, busting myths, pointing out why attempts at regulation have failed and suggesting the way forward. Published by Cambridge University […]
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Delia’s legal web picks September 2018
This article first appeared in Legal Web Watch September 2018. Legal Web Watch is a free email service which complements the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers. To receive Legal Web Watch regularly sign up here. The following items have been selected from Delia Venables’ “New” page. The ILFM legal software suppliers guide for 2018-2019 is now […]
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Becoming a highly successful small law firm
Richard Hugo-Hamman, Executive Chairman of LEAP, gives his advice on how small law firms can become more successful Building a successful law firm requires thought and planning but above all it requires action. 89% of all law firms have between one and five partners and, like many small businesses, they are often under-resourced with many […]
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Collaboration using web based apps
What do a family law barrister in Bristol, a law lecturer in Cardiff and a legal publisher in London have in common? The answer is that Lucy Reed, Julie Doughty and I are collaborators – both as members and trustees of the Transparency Project and, more recently, as co-authors of a book, Transparency in the […]
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The right to be forgotten – updated
With our lives increasingly documented online – whether this takes the form of professional personas on LinkedIn, personal updates on Facebook, political views on Twitter, selfies on Instagram or damning reviews on forums – it has become virtually impossible to forget our past. Younger generations are sometimes publishing (either purposefully or inadvertently) their every thought, […]
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Changing your cloud system supplier
Changing your legal software supplier has always been difficult and on occasions, acrimonious. Each software system will have different ways of setting up clients, names and addresses and other characteristics, entering financial information, managing the handling of cases (with different case management systems), managing the security of the data, restructuring management reports, how long to […]
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Legal ebooks: who needs them?
Back in November 2012, I described in the Newsletter how, since ebooks had hit the big time, the law publishers had enthusiastically responded. Where are we now? In terms of the general picture, ebook sales have recently plateaued, though reports of its demise are premature. According to Simon Rowberry, writing in The Bookseller: “On the […]
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Legislation.gov.uk: finally up to date?
Most types of primary legislation (eg Acts, Measures, NI Orders in Council) on legislation.gov.uk are intended to be held in “revised” form, meaning that amendments made by subsequent legislation are incorporated into the text. Most types of secondary legislation are not revised and are held only in the form in which they were originally made. […]
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