Legal practice
Reinvent Law London 2013
How long does it take for an event to become a fixture in the landscape? The London marathon managed to do it following its first running in 1981 and has not looked back since. Another event, not quite on the same scale perhaps, looks set to make a similar impact in the legal arena. Last […]
Read More
Implementing a hosted practice management system
More than 2,200 UK legal practices and ABSs now use a hosted practice management system (PMS) with their system and data held (hosted) in a secure, remote location, accessed via the internet, in preference to keeping servers and software on-premise in their own offices. That is roughly 20 per cent of all law firms and […]
Read More
The best of both – bricks and mortar and virtual
The coming of the much-vaunted information age, improvements in digital and internet technology, and the increasing requirement for law firms to diversify and innovate over the last ten years has led to a series of interesting experiments in business models for lawyers. Law firms (as demonstrated by the success of such firms as Excello Law, […]
Read More
Tomorrow’s Lawyers
Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future is a new book by Richard Susskind, published by Oxford University Press, January 2013. It is smaller and more compact than Richard’s previous books and inexpensive (in paperback at £9.99) but contains the condensed and assimilated wisdom of one of the most important thinkers that we have about […]
Read More
The Co-operative Legal Services ABS
Introduction from Delia Venables: The Co-operative Legal Services is already a major player in the legal services market, operating out of Bristol and employing around 450 staff. In March 2012 it was the first major consumer brand to be granted ABS status under the new Legal Services Act, allowing it to offer a range of […]
Read More
An online solicitor in Scotland
As a one man band in the Far North of Scotland, I run a fairly standard Scottish county town solicitors office. Over the years, with areas of law becoming increasingly complicated and with the risks involved in being anything but well versed in what you practice, my practice has condensed down to estate agency and […]
Read More
The changing legal landscape – threats and opportunities
The legal services market is likely to experience more changes in the next few years than at any time in recent history. There are clear threats to many high street law firms and solicitors from new competition but there are also opportunities for law firms willing to explore new business models and partnerships, or those […]
Read More
A sole practitioner in the internet age
I have been fascinated by the internet ever since I discovered, on buying my first computer when setting up as a sole practitioner in 1994, that there was this thing called the internet, where computers could talk to each other through telephone lines. I truly believe that it will bring in changes of the same […]
Read More
Should lawyers give free advice to attract clients?
I made friends with an entrepreneur recently who had looked into trade marking her business name. She has not yet proceeded with any of the firms she contacted. So I was curious to find out who she had approached and how much my competitors were charging. None of this turned out to be particularly surprising […]
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
A new kind of advocate; a new kind of chambers
Since 2007 Perren Buildings has been pioneering a way for solicitor advocates to work together in criminal practice. The last few years have seen solicitor advocates emerging as a significant presence in the Crown Courts, but we recognised that traditional firms do not necessarily offer the right support and career opportunities to Crown Court advocates. […]
Read More
Pro bono law – getting organised online?
Around half of all solicitors occasionally do legal work for free. There is no reason to think the numbers for barristers and legal executives are any different. “Pro bono” advice – as it is known – occurs in many different contexts from phone advice in the office to evening law clinics in community centres to […]
Read More
