Year: 2017
Billy, the robotic junior clerk
Billy Bot is the world’s first robotic junior clerk for a barristers’ chambers. The concept of Billy Bot came out of the huge growth in public access work that now comes directly to barristers. Members of the public can now contact chambers directly to discuss their potential cases with the clerks in chambers. This presents […]
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Competitive advertising on the internet
The competitive nature of pay per click advertising opens one potentially lucrative avenue to advertisers: bidding on your competitors’ keywords. Is it worth doing? Let’s explore the options. You will commonly see advertisers bidding on competitor’s keywords. In the example above, we can see four advertisements for a search for the well-known drains clearing company […]
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What are chambers’ websites for?
What a silly question, you may be thinking; everyone has to have a website these days. Well yes, everyone has to have to have the basic details of the organisation online, with contact details and something which looks nice. But beyond that? For many years, I have had a section about the Bar on my […]
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Digital legacies
The development of the internet has gradually shifted many aspects of modern life from the real, tangible world to a virtual, digital domain: music, films and books are stored in the cloud, social lives are conducted online and bank accounts are managed with apps. As we move towards an increasingly online existence, this raises the […]
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Don’t pay lawyers?
In this issue Casey Flaherty forcefully makes the case against the hype surrounding AI and robots in legal, particularly by vendors talking up their own offerings. He is also somewhat sensitive to those who call their offerings “lawyers” when they clearly are not. One such, indeed the one who has claimed “the world’s first robot […]
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Outsourced cashiering and your bottom line
Success in business The ultimate marker of a successful business is the strength of its bottom line. Profitability is everything if you want to survive and thrive. The route to healthy profits is maximising income and minimising costs. You don’t necessarily need us to tell you about maximising income. Revenue generation is your forte, achieved […]
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10 considerations when starting your own law firm
The continuing advancement of cloud technology and the new ownership regulation means it has never been easier to start a law firm. Mobility, simpler and lower cost technology and widespread acceptance of remote working is motivating legal entrepreneurs wanting to start their own practice. What law to practice Your brand should be determined by your […]
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Companies selling legal services online
It is probably easier for companies to sell legal services and documents online than it is for firms of solicitors. This may seem unfair, given that the ultimate product (eg a divorce or a conveyance) was originally created by lawyers to protect the client. How can it be that non-lawyers can do it better? In […]
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Employment tribunal judgments online
Employment tribunal judgments are now available online on GOV.UK at www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal-decisions. Previously, in order to read a first instance judgment, you had to hope that one of the parties published it or that the judiciary website considered it to be of sufficient importance to publish or to take a trip to the central register and […]
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How not to commission a website
Recently, I met a barrister who was handling a case where a website project had gone badly wrong, losing significant sales for the customer who had commissioned it. After comparing war stories, we concluded that a lot more websites go awry than one might realise and that it might be worth sharing some of the […]
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Time for a new intranet at Leigh Day
Leigh Day is a law firm with offices in London, Manchester and Liverpool. It was founded by Sarah Leigh and Martyn Day and celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. The firm currently has more than 400 staff, the majority in London, but with an office of more than 60 staff in Manchester and a small […]
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What are smart contracts?
The origin of the term “smart contract” has been attributed to Nick Szabo who wrote a paper in the late 90s in which he described them as combining “protocols with user interfaces to formalize and secure relationships over computer networks.” However, the more popular meaning of “smart contract” in current parlance, and for purposes of […]
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