For older (archived) "New" items, see
New from 2008 or
New from 2009 or
New from 2010 or
New from 2011 or
New from 2012.
Last updated June 17th 2013.
Interesting new site on property law
Jonny Law Online is a very useful site about property and
property law maintained by Jonathan Achampong, a conveyancing solicitor with a major firm, Ashfords.
There are sections on conveyancing, lease extensions, leasehold, enfranchisement and commercial property.
There are also featured articles on news items and topics of current interest.
Last updated June 15th 2013.
UK Criminal Law blog was set up by 3 barristers from
2 Dr. Johnson’s Buildings
after a discussion on Twitter concerning inaccurate reports of criminal cases in the press, the lack of public understanding of the criminal
justice system and the number of unlawful sentences handed out by the courts. It was noted that many news reports, and consequently
discussions had by the public concerning cases of interest, are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the law
(and on numerous occasions, inaccurate facts). In addition, it appeared that many solicitors, barristers and even judges,
make fundamental errors of law. The site contains a major source of information about the court system and the legal system generally,
particularly with respect to criminal law. There are also headnotes from important Court of Appeal and Supreme Court
explaining the impact of the decision. Where possible, they also provide the sentencing remarks from the Magistrates’ and
Crown Courts, together with a short report stating the facts and the outcome.
Last updated May 15th 2013.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
has recently published advice on "Bring your own device " (BYOD) on its website
here.
The introduction says "Bring your own device is a term which refers to when employees use their personal
computing devices (typically smart phones and tablets) in the workplace.
Permitting devices which you do not have sufficient control over to connect to the corporate IT systems
can introduce a range of security vulnerabilities and other data protection concerns if not correctly managed.
This guidance explores what you need to consider if permitting the use of personal devices to process personal
data for which you are responsible."
The guidance (a 13 page pdf document) looks at the risks and benefits of doing this and suggests some of the
topics which should be included in a BYOD policy.
A summary of the document is provided by
Law Now (CMS Cameron McKenna's information site)
here.
Last updated May 5th 2013.
Two new Legal Apps launched by Irish firm
Irish Data Privacy Law
has been launched by leading Irish firm
A&L Goodbody.
The Irish Data Protection Commissioner supports this useful tool as it is aimed at senior management,
privacy law professionals and in-house lawyers who need to respond to an increasing number of data protection
requirements and challenges that data security presents to businesses today. The app is designed to allow
users to access up to date, concise information on data privacy law generally as well as providing access
to the relevant Irish and European acts and regulations. It also includes an index of privacy law terms.
It is free to download to iPhone and iPad
here.
The firm has committed itself to keep the App updated with all future legal developments in the
area coming down the tracks at an Irish and European level.
The new app is part of a suite of online tools which have been developed by the Firm over the past year,
including Irish HR Law A-Z, Ireland’s first dedicated law app which provides HR professionals, in-house
lawyers and senior executives with accessible information on employment law facts and regulations,
free to download
here.
As well as the A-Z of HR law terminology, there are interactive calculators on adoptive leave, maternity leave and redundancy.
This App comes from A&L Goodbody's
Employment Law practice.
Last updated April 12th 2013.
The Ministry of Justice web site has moved to GOV.UK.
The Ministry of Justice web site has now (apparently) moved to
GOV.UK. However, all the areas of interest to lawyers (as distinct
from "ordinary people") still seem to be on the old Justice site, e.g. Procedure rules, Daily court lists,
Prison finder, Court fees, Employment Tribunal guidance and Claims management regulation. I cannot
find these sections on GOV.UK. For example, if you go to
GOV.UK and search for "procedure rules" you get things like rules
for cyclists. There is a section on GOV.UK for "Crime, Justice and the Law" but it does not seem to
have any of the things which lawyers would actually be looking for. If you go to the section for Crime,
Justice and the Law" on the GOV.UK site and search for "procedure rules" you still get the rules for cyclists.
For the time being, it might be better to continue to use the old Justice link and work from there.
Of course, I could be wrong.... or just missing something..... Can anyone help?
Last updated April 11th 2013.
The latest group of Direct Access Barristers will provide some competition to solicitors, looking for clients!
myBARRISTER is a new online service that gives
people and businesses direct access to the specialised skills of barristers, helping them resolve
legal issues, defend against prosecution, take legal action or simply providing specialist legal
advice on a particular situation.
myBARRISTER is the idea of, and is funded by, Ronald DeKoven of DeKoven Chambers, Lincoln's Inn.
Here is how it works (as described on the site):
1.Use the search function to select a nearby barrister who's a specialist in your problem.
2.Use your first free phone call to talk through your problem.
3.Agree a price and commission your barrister to provide a legal opinion for you.
4.They will ask you a lot of questions about your situation and will then review the law and write up their opinion.
5.You meet with your barrister or speak on the phone to go through the opinion and to agree your next steps.
Last updated March 30th 2013.
The Supreme court is now on YouTube! My thanks to Amanda Millmore of
Legal Training for this information.
The Supreme Court has launched its own
YouTube channel showing videos of judgments being handed down.
There are around 30 judgments on there now, from 2013, as well as some older ones from the latter part of 2012.
And whilst on the subject of the Supreme Court, there is an interesting history and analysis on the Guardian's Law Section here -
The UK supreme court: an interactive history.
The history starts in 1399 (the time of Henry Bollingbroke) and continues to the present day, with more recent periods described
with a Summary of the key judgments emanating from that time.
Last updated March 20th 2013.
The Precedent Store is a new microsite from infolaw which
focusses exclusively on legal precedent documents on CD and online.
There is full information on a wide range of Precedents on CD, which may be purchased from the store online;
plus information and links to Online Services for law firms and businesses and legal forms.
The site has been created by Nick Holmes of
infolaw. Nick has been involved with developing, producing and supplying
legal documents on disk, CD and online for more than 25 years.
He provided the first online forms service, Nick's infolaw Formfinder, and then the comprehensive Lawfinder in 2001.
He produced one of the first UK legal weblogs and the first legal metadata webfeed in the UK in 2004. He was also
among the first legal commentators in the UK to take full account of social networking for lawyers.
Associated with The Precedent Store, Nick is writing a
Precedent Store Blog which will cover everything to do with
legal documents: new products, developments in document production and automation, online services and more.
His first post covers Precedents on Disk (way back). Just for fun he lists the dozens of formats in use then;
if you were there in the early days, have a look at this (and be grateful that we live "now").
Last updated March 17th 2013.
Visualfiles was acquired by LexisNexis
Butterworths in 2006 and rebranded as LexisNexis Visualfiles. Before that, it was Solicitec, one of the first companies
to develop case management software. The changes in identity have blurred the
capabilities (and pedigree) of Visualfiles but I understand that a new development and marketing "push" is now
being given to the product. Indeed, during 2012, adoption of the product grew substantially, crossing the 25,000
licences mark across 360 sites - possibly the largest installed user base in the UK.
The technology can handle 2000 plus concurrent users, across multiple sites but is also available "out of the box"
for smaller firms. For ease of use Visualfiles is delivered inside Microsoft Outlook.
It provides a file centric view of documents, emails, contacts and standard precedents in a simple file handler
friendly interface.
Last updated March 7th 2013.
Extensive information on various divorce matters
May May & Merrimans of Gray's Inn, London, provide two
specialist sites www.prenups.uk.com and
www.leavetoremove.co.uk with extensive information on these topics.
The site on prenuptual agreements aims to provide clients considering any such
agreements with relevant information, whether they are the financially stronger
or financially weaker partner. The site sets out the current law on prenups and good practice requirements to
be observed, so as to have the best chance of such agreements being upheld by the court in the event of a
divorce, as well as outlining possible changes to the law to be made following the final report which is
awaited from the Law Commission on whether prenups should be made legally enforceable.
The site on international leave to remove provides necessary information to parents who wish to relocate
abroad with their children after the breakdown of a relationship, or to oppose an application by the other
parent for leave to remove the children of the relationship abroad. The web site covers the current law on
leave to remove, an outline of the court process, advice to parents on how to prepare their case (in support
of an application for leave to remove or in opposition to such an application), and alternatives to the court
process (family mediation and collaborative law).
Last updated February 25th 2013.
Are you looking for some financial assistance for post graduate study of the law? Here is a handy reference.
The Law Society provides
a very useful summary of the various grants, loans, awards and scholarships available for the post graduate
study of law. In particular, it describes the Law Society's own Diversity Access Scheme...
"The Diversity Access Scheme (DAS) offers assistance with Legal Practice Course (LPC) fees to exceptional
individuals who face or have overcome exceptional obstacles to qualify as a solicitor. Obstacles may be of
a financial, social, educational or personal nature, or might relate to a disability or chronic health
condition that makes the goal of qualifying as a solicitor a particularly challenging one."
Applications are now open and will close on 29th March.
This is the only source of financial assistance for legal education fees available from the Law Society,
so no funding is available from the Law Society for the law degree, GDL, CPE, LLM or any other courses.
However, a number of other possible sources of finance for post graduate study of law are described on this page.
Last updated February 15th 2013.
Impossible - or...?
Should the Law
Society set up a Bank? is an interesting (and challenging) idea put forward by Gill Steel in
Gill's blog. Gill runs
Lawskills, a consultancy and training company which helps
practitioners develop their skills in the areas of Wills, Probate, Trusts and Tax.
She says "The service which many law firm clients receive from retail banking is poor.
Loans to meet IHT charges in an estate are pretty much a thing of the past; the recognition of different
powers of attorney and their use in managing a client’s money is generally poor to abysmal and there are
increasingly cases of frustration in not being able to satisfy correct Money Laundering procedures.
We have had, amongst other things, the mis-selling of protection insurance, the unwillingness of some banks
to lend to customers and ridiculously low rates of interest on funds."
The LawSkills website is a mine of information for the Wills, Probate, Trust and Tax profession
providing technical advice and commentary through articles, glossary, Gill's blog and podcasts.
Last updated February 8th 2013.
Frugal Dad is a USA site providing a database of
USA colleges offering online education. It allows the viewer (the Frugal Dad or the potential student) to search
for affordable colleges throughout the USA. It lists the Institutions across the USA together with the fees for
in-state and out-of-state students.
Currently, many universities, such the University of Washington, Maryland and Houston have themselves listed this
resource as useful for people who are not only looking to further their education but also have to finance it.
There are also some interesting facts about online education. According to the Sloan Consortium (a well respected USA institute),
there were over 6 million people in the USA enrolled in at least one online course in 2010 - and doubtless the numbers
have gone up considerably since then.
The site is not specifically related to legal education and you cannot use it to select legal courses online,
but since it links to the Colleges and Universities themselves, you could research this further for any particular
institution in which you were interested.
PS This site allows an interesting comparison with UK fees. Many USA Universities charge fees of $30,000 to $40,000,
often (for the more famous institutions) with no differences between in-state and out-of-state students.
Last updated February 7th 2013.
Relaunch of an interesting online journal
UpperCase is a very interesting journal from
Anya Designs. Anya started life as an electronic publishing
company in 1996, working with both Blackstones and Jordan Publishing to produce electronic books for the Psion 5.
Currently they publish the Criminal Offences Handbook, edited by Mike Gribbin, both as a book and a digital publication
and various other works.
They also write software for case management and legal accounting, with 350 firms as users, and generally
provide software tools for lawyers. The journal, also edited by Mike Gribbin, covers Case Law, Civil Law, Civil Liberties, Criminal Justice,
Law Updates, Legal Aid, Legal IT, ilaw and Legal Practice Management.
This is a serious journal and well worth a look from lawyers (and it is free). It is also well produced
and attractive to look at. You can read it online or register to receive it by email.
Important Exhibition on IT for Lawyers - and it's free
The 13th Annual Legal IT Business Show
will take place on 5-6 March 2013 at the Business Design Centre in London.
This is the largest exhibition in Europe on Software and Services for the Legal Profession with
60+ exhibitors demonstrating the latest developments to over 1100 senior managers
and buyers from law firms and in-house legal departments.
There will be product launches and seminars on topical areas of interest.
There will be 128 "Showcases" Across 8 Key Technology Themes, running throughout the day in their own enclosed pods
within the exhibition hall. These are small group discussions with limited numbers, each lasting For 30 minutes.
For the latest programme and to register for your free visitor pass visit the site, as above.
Last updated February 5th 2013.
Extensions to the very popular Court Search app
Court Search from CPD provider
Legal Training in conjunction with
MillieSoft has been extended for 2013.
Features include Court addresses, maps, directions and contact details as well as live Crown Court information,
and daily lists for the High Court and above.
The iPhone and iPad version now contains details of Tribunals and their lists too.
A new feature for 2013 across all devices is the addition of car parking information near to each Court.
The app is also available for Android phones and Blackberry devices. Links to
purchase the app in each of these versions are provided on the Court Search site, as above.
Last updated January 24th 2013.
Big news on the legal software supplier front
Tikit has been taken over by
BT.
Tikit itself took over TFB a few years ago, one of the leading suppliers of software for lawyers and, as
TikitTFB has continued to be a leader in that market,
suppying legal software (particularly Partner for Windows) to over 600 firms across the UK.
Now it will be part of a group of six separately managed businesses within BT Enterprises,
a division of BT Retail. Each of these businesses will maintain the autonomy and entrepreneurial spirit of a standalone business.
Last updated January 23rd 2013.
Latest legal app, a legal e-resource locator, named LawSauce
LawSauce is a new legal app written by Ruth Bird (University of Oxford, Bodleian Law Librarian)
and Natalie Wieland (Legal Research Skills Adviser, Melbourne Law School). It is an
e-resource locator developed to quickly locate the right legal web resource for legal tasks, which can otherwise be a very complex task.
LawSauce includes over 7,000 records covering case law and legislative sources for many jurisdictions.
It is organised by broad geographical region, such as North America or Asia. The sources are then arranged by their jurisdictional location.
For the UK & Europe region, links are to the EU, as well as to each individual country in greater Europe, extending to Russia and
the CIS in the east and Ireland in the west. The app can be downloaded from the
Android Store or the
iTunes store.
Supreme Court warns of 'uncertainty' if legal privilege extended to non-lawyers (see
Solicitors Journal for full article)
Parliament, and not the courts, should decide on whether legal advice privilege (LAP) should be extended to non-lawyers,
the Supreme Court has decided, 5-2.
Four justices agreed with Lord Neuberger that extending the principle to accountants and other professionals would
“carry with it an unacceptable risk of uncertainty and loss of clarity in a sensitive area of law”.
Lords Sumption and Clarke dissented, on the grounds that English courts had always taken a “functional approach” to LAP.
Last updated January 20th 2013.
IRIS Legal, a leading provider of legal software, has launched a new user group
IRIS Legal User Group (ILUG) to provide a knowledge sharing forum for its customers and to collaborate with them on existing services and
new product development. Over 600 of its users have already registered, including solicitors, barristers, in-house and
legal forms customer bases. There will also be sub-groups around products, specialist areas or common interest groups
such as cashiers, marketing, etc.
Last updated December 27th 2012.
Tomorrow's Lawyers
is the new book (published by Oxford University Press) by Richard Susskind. It is smaller and more
compact than Richard's previous books and very inexpensive (around £10) but contains the condensed and
assimilated wisdom of one of the most important thinkers that we have about the way that legal services are changing,
and will be delivered in the years to come.
The book is in three parts. The first offers an updated restatement of Richard's views on the future of legal services.
This was broadly the topic of his first book, The Future of Law, which came out in 1996, and which described the
overwhelming (and disruptive) changes which he foresaw in the way that Law would be practised and delivered in the years to come.
He has brought his body of thought up to date every few years since then, most recently in The End of Lawyers? in 2008
but he now presents it in a newly burnished form in Tomorrow's Lawyers.
The second part looks at the new legal landscape - what legal firms will look like, the role of in-house lawyers, the new
ways in which legal services will be provided and how all this affects the citizen's access to law. He is by no means uniformly
pessimistic about this - he sees legal knowledge and advice being provided in many new ways, many of them online, at the
same time as some of the older ways (one to one legal advice) become less viable.
In the third section he turns to the prospects for young lawyers. This has also been one of the themes of his past books -
not just looking at "the future of law" but also the future for young lawyers. In this section, he looks at what the new legal
jobs will be like, who will employ young lawyers, how they should be trained and (very importantly)
the questions which these same young lawyers should be asking of their future employers.
The book is very direct, compact and easy to read, even if assimilating the ideas in it may take a little longer!
You may not always agree with Richard's ideas but you cannot, surely, think that he is asking the wrong questions!
Make it your new year's resolution to read this book.
Professor Richard Susskind OBE is an author, speaker, and independent adviser to major professional
firms and to national governments. His main area of expertise is the future of professional service,
with particular reference to information technology. He has worked on legal technology for over 30 years.
Last updated December 13th 2012.
The monthly Legal Technology Insider newsletter has been rebranded and redesigned as
Legal IT Insider and expanded its global news coverage of
legal technology, ediscovery and social media trends within the legal services sector. The digital edition is now available
free of charge. You can sign up for it
here - and you can still buy a print version published
on the Insider's hallmark orange paper! The main change has been expanding the content and doubling the pagination
to cover all relevant UK, US, APAC and worldwide legal IT news in one issue, reflecting that a decision taken in London
or Los Angeles can now have immediate repercussions for companies and law firms in New York, Frankfurt,
Hong Kong, Dubai, Cape Town, Rio, Singapore and Sydney. Editor and legal IT guru Charles Christian is still in Charge!
A new initiative from the Conveyancing Association
The Conveyancing Association (CA) founded in 2010,
is the membership body for the specialist conveyancer. It is the only trade body in the residential property sector which
specifically represents the interests of both licensed conveyancers and solicitors firms in the UK who fall into the
category of ‘Serious Conveyancers’. Since the launch, the CA has developed a significant presence in the sector
and has expanded its membership of like-minded firms to 53. Its members carry out over two thirds (67%) of all UK
mortgaging work and 15% of all UK property transactions. Today they have launched a set of conveyancing ‘Pledges’,
the conveyancing industry’s first ever set of customer service commitments going above and beyond existing regulations
and accreditation schemes, which all CA members have agreed to uphold.
The CA has developed the Pledges to ensure that its members provide their customers with the transparent,
efficient and professional service that home-buyers expect when making one of the biggest decisions of their lives.
The commitment made by all CA members to uphold them marks a significant milestone in the history of the housing market.
It is the first time licensed conveyancers as well as solicitors have joined together to create and uphold a formal
industry-led commitment to improving the house-buying process.
Last updated December 10th 2012.
Last updated December 6th 2012.
If you have an employee who spends too much time on Facebook, what can you do about it?
Andrew Crisp, of
Advantage Employment Law (a division of Mason Bullock),
writes on this topic in his employment law blog.
Would you like some advice in writing a persuasive proposal or tender document?
Graham Laing of Professional Services Marketing firm Rokman Laing provides a
free 10 page guide to preparing tender & proposal documents for professional service firms.
Last updated December 1st 2012.
Software for lawyers "in the cloud" is coming of age
LawCloud is now celebrating its
hundreth UK Law Firm using its legal software "in the cloud". LawCloud provides software and support for solicitors in the UK
who are looking to start up a new law firm or existing traditional small or medium sized firms looking to modernise
and do more with technology, offering in-house and hosted systems.
Last updated November 20th 2012.
Do you use Google Analytics? Do you use it effectively?
Google Analytics (GA) is a service offered by Google
that generates detailed statistics about visits to a particular website.
It is by far the most widely used website statistics service partly (at least) because it is free. Many firms use the
service but probably few get the benefits that they could, if they really understood the data.
One key problem is how to compare your results with other firms. Are you doing well - or not?
David Gilroy of
Conscious Solutions believes that a lot more could be learned
if people were prepared to share their data - made anonymous of course - and each year, he provides a "statistics
benchmarking audit" - effectively a data collection point and analysis - to enable this to happen.
If you send him your data for September (6 key metrics),
he will provide you with a full copy of the anonymised data and the analysis, along with comparison to the historic
data from 2010 & 2011 all free of charge. In 2011 there were 180 firms participating in the study and this year he hopes to have around
300 taking part. Find out more
here.
And he provides an additional bonus - the chance to win an iPad Mini. Every firm that provides their data will be put in a draw for an iPad Mini.
Last updated November 10th 2012.
Study shows that only 1.2% of smaller law firms have a client feedback facility on their website
LegallyBetter has carried out a survey of 160 smaller law
firms’ websites with respect to the provision of a client feedback facility and have discovered that
only two of these firms have any readily accessible online client feedback facility on their website.
Jon Hepburn, MD of Legallybetter, says "Law firms need to show that they are achieving the required outcomes
under the new OFR compliance.
Just asking a client for feedback by sending an email or posting a questionnaire may well not be enough for the SRA.
The requirement is to actively seek and record feedback and act on the findings.
No law firm wants to compete on price – reputation maximisation and a responsive attitude to clients is a must,
as is the ability to request those all-important recommendations.”
Legallybetter provides a number of services relating to audited client feedback.
A new Irish directory of solicitors
Legal Panda is an Irish Solicitor directory and law community.
Listing every solicitor registered in Ireland, it aims to help connect people and businesses with solicitors.
The site also contains a question & answer section with regular opinion and news pieces on the law.
Set up in 2012, the site is well designed and easy to use, as well as comprehensive.
Last updated October 17th 2012.
A day well spent - and good fun too.
Conscious Solutions provide Websites, Marketing, CRM
and Intranets for law firms. The company is led by David Gilroy who has a great gift of providing cutting edge information
in a simple-to-understand way. I have just been to a day course he provided called "Digital Marketing Masterclass for Law Firms" and I found it fascinating.
If he does any more of these classes, clear a day from your diary and go to it.
Last updated October 15th 2012.
CaseCheck intends to compete with some of the largest publishers in the world, such as LexisNexis and Westlaw, with a new premium version
CaseCheck, established in 2007 by Stephen Moore, is a free
legal resource that provides case reports and expert summaries online. With more than 12,000 case reports from across
the UK and EU provided by solicitors, barristers, advocates and academics, there are now 20,000 registered users from
over 200 locations around the world. The site has 40 categories of case law and many more sub-categories.
Approximately 130 case summaries are added to the site each month and the resource is a sector leader in the areas of
employment and personal injury case law content.
Casecheck is now launching a premium version, costing from £2 a week for individual users with new facilities such as
mobile versions of the site, personalisation of the weekly bulletins, increased scope of the current awareness,
increased regularity and comprehensiveness of the case law and a personal CPD recorder.
Funding to develop the enhancements has been provided by the West of Scotland Loan Fund and RBS.
Last updated October 11th 2012.
A new development in Central and Eastern Europe
LawTech Europe Congress takes place in Prague on
November 12th 2012. This is a major event with the aim of setting up a new hub of IT and the Law in central and Eastern
Europe. Speakers known to UK people include Richard Susskind, Charles Christian and Chris Dale but there will also be (obviously)
many speakers from the rest of Europe, looking to interact and learn from each other's experiences.
There is a video promo channel
here.
Although I am not able to go myself, it does
sound like a very interesting event and the organisers have been kind enough to extend a free VIP ticket to everyone who
comes to know of LTEC through my website. (Normal cost is 199 euros)
The registration link is
here and
the discount code is 96-STGEORGES-RD.
Last updated October 6th 2012.
Well designed new site
Brain & Spinal Injuries comes from
Leigh Day & Co a specialist claimant personal injury law firm.
The site provides a series of case studies, using video reports from the members of the family of the injured people
and descriptions of the legal processes involved from the lawyers handling the cases. The style is straight forward and informative and would be very useful to families wondering
what to do next.
Last updated October 2nd 2012.
A thought provoking blog from Tim Kevan
The Legal Terrier Blog is written by Tim Kevan who was a practising
barrister for ten years and is the author of the BabyBarista blog and books. It focuses on digging up the points that matter to
solicitors and barristers across the spectrum but with a particular emphasis on personal injury and reform of legal services.
Last updated October 1st 2012.
Interesting resource on the European Court of Human Rights
ECHR Online offers free information on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and
the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights.
The site is created by German Lawyer Holger Hembach who has worked for the
UN, OSCE and the Council of Europe on projects in the area of justice reform and he has been involved
with training lawyers on the Convention and assessing draft laws in the light of the guarantees enshrined in it.
The motivation behind the site is to provide information to lawyers, potential applicants and NGOs, particularly in countries where
books on the Convention are hard to come by. The site also provides links to other resources and organisations in this area.
Last updated September 23rd 2012.
Junior Bar Face Increasing Difficulty Getting Barrister Mortgages is the title of an article provided by
Mortgage Broker Capital Fortune. The article has been written by Rob Killeen, himself a barrister,
and he highlights the problems of young barristers who often have huge debts after their training period. They may be owed considerable amounts
in fees, but this does not apparently count in the calculations made when you try to get a mortgage.
Last updated September 8th 2012.
More ways in which a firm can get involved with particular issues
Leigh Day & Co. based in London, provide a specialised site at
Support Equal Pay with extensive information on
women's rights to equal pay - and the many ways in which they are denied this.
They also sponsor www.womensequalitynetwork.org.uk.
Both these sites cover discrimination and employment topics in some depth and would certainly be of
interest to women looking for legal representation.
Last updated August 26th 2012.
Another bunch of specialised web sites!
Switalskis - Wakefield, Bradford, Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield, Pontefract and Dewsbury, also
and another...
Mark Thompson Law - Exeter, also
Last updated August 13th 2012.
The latest firm with a string of specialised sites is a Welsh firm...
Curtis Legal - Monmouth, also
Last updated August 1st 2012.
New web site for HUDOC
The HUDOC database provides access to the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights
(Grand Chamber, Chamber and Committee judgments, decisions, communicated cases, advisory opinions and
legal summaries from the Case-Law Information Note), the European Commission of Human Rights (decisions and reports)
and the Committee of Ministers (resolutions). As of Summer 2013, the data base has been completely reformulated
to provide better searching facilities and access to the ECHR judgments and decisions.
There is a useful set of FAQs
here.
Last updated July 23rd 2012.
I have just set up a new prize - the firm with the largest number of specialised web sites!
The prize has been won by
Bonallack and Bishop of Salisbury, Andover, Amesbury, Verwood and Warminster.
Their latest bunch of specialised web sites are:
www.grandparentrights.co.uk
www.hipreplacementrecall.co.uk
www.leaseextensionuk.co.uk
military-lawyer.co.uk
www.how-to-claim-compensation.co.uk
They already have
www.enfranchisementsolicitors.co.uk (leasehold property),
www.prenuptial-agreement.co.uk, thenowinnofeesolicitor.co.uk,
www.intellectual-property-lawyer.co.uk,
www.compromiseagreementsolicitorsuk.co.uk,
www.armydivorce.co.uk,
www.militarydivorce.co.uk,
www.extendingalease.co.uk,
professional-negligence-claim.co.uk,
contestingawilluk.co.uk,
freehold-purchase.co.uk,
ip-lawyer.legalbloggers.co.uk
Or is there anyone out there with more?
I am feeling a bit tired now and I need to go and have a little rest.
Last updated July 14th 2012.
A Digital Marketing Masterclass in October, with a special rate if you quote this web site!
Conscious Solutions, led by David Gilroy, is offering
a full day's training in digital marketing. There are sessions on website best practice,
search engine optimisation, social media, email newsletters, visitor analytics and online video.
Running for four days in Manchester, Birmingham, London and Bristol, the day offers 5 hours of CPD (SRA Accreditation pending),
for a vanishingly low price of £67 plus VAT and 10% less if you use a reference code of DELIA10 when
booking.
Locations:
Tuesday 9 October @ Village Hotel, Cheadle
Wednesday 10 October @ Village Hotel, Solihull
Tuesday 16 October @ Rembrandt Hotel, South Kensington, London
Thursday 18 October @ Engineers House, Clifton, Bristol
Last updated July 10th 2012.
BAILII and BIALL are easy to confuse from the names, but...
The British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) is to double its annual
donation commitment to
The British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) - from £5,000 a year to £10,000
a year, for the next 3 years.
BAILII is a non-profit making charitable trust which aims to promote the service and public access to primary legal materials in general.
BAILII maintains an interactive database of full text primary legal materials, available without charge
on the Internet. The service is a major tool for legal research and the continued availability and development of the service is of
major importance to the practice and teaching of law.
The BAILII database has on average in excess of 45,000 requests a day.
Despite its amazing contribution to free access to the Law in the UK and Ireland (and affiliated to other similar services around
the world) BAILII desperately needs continuing and new donations to maintain and develop the service.
Last updated July 2nd 2012.
Latest important legal blog
Eutopia law comes from members of Matrix Chambers' EU law group.
It comments selectively on interesting developments in EU law, particularly as they affect lawyers’ practice areas,
and at contributing to the debate on topical issues.
It is not intended to promote any particular party line or view-point.
The name is a pun on Thomas More's Utopia (published in 1516). "Utopia" is already a pun in Greek: it can be understood as
meaning both no-place (ou-topia) and good-place (eu-topia). Eutopia is a further extension of the pun! Current posts
look at the apparent suspension of the rule of law in the EU as countries seek to remedy the eurozone crisis.
Last updated June 28th 2012.
IRIS Legal, the largest provider of software and IT services to UK law firms and chambers,
has won the "Best Technology Project at The Lawyer Awards 2012." The project related to the delivery of the hosted IRIS
Meridian Law Connected project to
No5 Chambers, one of the largest sets of barristers’ chambers in England & Wales.
The project involved a large and complex integrated IT system spread across three UK locations.
No5 Chambers outsources all of its IT requirements to IRIS Legal.
The full list of awards can be seen
here.
Last updated June 21st 2012.
Legal Futures reports that the
Law Society is investigating whether to launch its own solicitor comparison website. The society’s existing
Find a Solicitor website
provides basic information for consumers, but a revamped site could include more detail on quality, areas of specialism
and even price (although this is acknowledged to be a very tricky area). Apparently the Society has commissioned a report on this.
My opinion... The provision of a comparison website from the "official" solicitors body would make all firms study
the site and then argue heatedly with the Society. It would be a bed of nails! Existing comparison sites "get away with it"
because no one of them is significantly important in the overall scheme of things to be worth a lot of hassle. But if the Law
Society were to provide such a site....
Last updated June 16th 2012.
Latest blog of interest
D'Souza. THE criminal barrister is "the trials and tribulations of
Dominic D'Souza. THE not so serious musings of a criminal barrister instructed to defend in the most serious and complex cases."
He muses on the nature of the Bar, the nature of a "calling" to the Bar, the nature of crime and why he is not thinking
kind and generous thoughts about the burglar who stole his car.
Last updated June 3rd 2012.
Getting up to date on the Justice site
The Justice website was launched in April 2011 as the Government’s attempt
to bring together all web sites related to the UK Justice system for the professional user. Initially it was a rather desperate attempt
to patch together lots of different sites, all with different underlying architectures and different views of what they were trying to do
but by now we now have an attractive and well designed site which covers the (very complicated) real life situation about as well
as it could. After all, any web site which made the British legal system appear simple, logical and straightforward would surely be an oversimplification!
A few handy pointers:
Despite the centralisation of most of the "Justice" related sites, described above, the following two services
seem to have stayed outside it and are actually rather hard to find....
Money Claim Online (MCOL)
enables people to issue a claim via the internet for a fixed sum under £100,000.
There is a fee of £27 minimum and the claimant fills in a number of screens online to set up the claim.
The service also enables a claimant to enter judgment,
file an acknowledgement of service or defence and apply for a warrant of execution, online.
Possession Claim Online (PCOL) is a service provided by
Her Majesty's Courts Service for claims in County Courts for residential property brought by a landlord against a tenant,
solely on the ground of arrears of rent (but not a claim for forfeiture of a lease) or a mortgagee against a mortgagor,
solely on the ground of default in the payment of sums due under a mortgage. In other words, the site allows for
straightforward claims with no extra complications but if the various conditions apply, the claim can be launched
online and also defended online. Fees are paid by credit card online.
These systems can be used by solicitors processing multiple claims as well as individuals.
Last updated June 2nd 2012.
Thomson Reuters have a new web site covering all their
legal solutions, products and services for the UK and Ireland. The subsections of the "Legal Solutions" part of the site are:
BPM & Case Management, Business Development and Marketing, Commentary & Analysis, eBilling & Project Management,
Federated Search & Knowledge Management, Human Resources, Legal Research, Legal Updates & Currency,
Risk Mitigation and Training & Online Learning.
Of these, the ones best known to lawyers so far are probably Commentary & Analysis (Sweet & Maxwell books and eBooks),
Legal Research (Westlaw), Legal Updates & Currency (Lawtel) and Training and online Learning (CPD Webinars).
The "Legal Solutions" section describes the products generically but there is also a section called "Products & Services A to Z"
which enables the viewer to locate a particular product or service, irrespective of generic type.
Last updated May 25th 2012.
JustCite, the provider-neutral legal citator from Justis Publishing Ltd,
now indexes both The Jersey Law Reports and the Jersey Judgments series.
The laws of Jersey have an international appeal, with many cases having a particular focus on banking, tax,
foundations and trusts, and financial services. Influenced by English and French legal systems, they have their roots
in Norman law.
The Jersey Judgments, which are provided by The Jersey Legal Information Board (JLIB) , contain the judgments
published by Jersey’s Royal Court from 1950 to 1984. The Jersey Law Reports, also from JLIB, cover matters of lasting
legal importance from Jersey’s Royal Court and Court of Appeal from 1985 onwards.
JustCite places these cases in context and also links to their full text online.
Last updated May 24th 2012.
A very large new player in the provision of legal services
The Co-operative Legal Services is already a major
player in the legal services market, operating out of Bristol and employing around 450 legally trained and support staff.
In March, it was the first major consumer brand to be granted alternative business structure (ABS) status under the new
Legal Services Act, allowing it to offer a range of consumer legal services previously only available from private solicitors.
Now it has announced that it will open five additional regional hubs across England and Wales over the next 5 years
and set up a new family law operation in London later this year. The expansion will create 3,000 jobs in the legal sector.
As well as family law, Co-operative Legal Services will offer a comprehensive range of consumer services including will writing,
probate and estate administration, conveyancing, personal injury claims, family law and employment law services,
all provided through either a telephone service, via the web utilising new functionality, or through selected face-to face services.
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