The ultimate law firm website checklist

It’s all about the first impression. For most potential clients, your website is your shopfront. Does it belong on Oxford street or skid row? This guide will help you find out. Step 1 – Google your firm The first step is to search for your firm in Google (I’m sure you don’t need a step-by-step […]

Read More

New digital services tax implemented in France

Governments around the world have grappled with the challenge of sufficiently taxing international companies – particularly peripatetic tech giants – which aggressively pursue policies of (perfectly legal) tax avoidance. One of the main reasons that so many Silicon Valley icons decide to base their European operations in Dublin (including Google and Apple) is due to […]

Read More

Max Schrems: the return

In the wake of growing data protection concerns around the turn of the century, a framework dubbed “Safe Harbor” was agreed between the EU and the US in 2000, which essentially permitted transatlantic free-flow of personal data. Towards the end of 2015, as a result of one of several legal challenges brought by prolific Austrian […]

Read More

First GDPR level fines in the UK

One of the key changes brought about by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force on 25 May 2018, was a substantial increase in the maximum fines available for data protection breaches, to the higher of €20 million or 4% of global annual turnover. Any breaches which occurred prior to this date […]

Read More

Three risks posed to conveyancers and how to avoid them

Risk management is an essential part of running any law firm. The costs – monetary and otherwise – can be substantial if practices don’t identify risks, and do everything they can to mitigate them. Different types of challenges can present themselves depending on the exact nature of your firm, and the work you do. Here, […]

Read More

The new EU copyright directive: backing creatives

The new EU copyright law that copyright lawyers, artists, management and media companies have been waiting for was passed on 17 April 2019 as Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC. The directive is not law as is (although some of its provisions […]

Read More

An Uber model for legal services delivery?

Some commentators have been asking whether law firms and other legal service organisations should adopt an Uber-like model for legal service delivery. From a narrow technological point of view I think is safe to assume that this could well happen. Looking at some of the less benign aspects of the model in practice, it seems […]

Read More

Information overload: time to take a break?

Information overload is defined by Wikipedia as “the difficulty in understanding an issue and effectively making decisions when one has too much information about that issue” – although, ironically, it offers alternative definitions based on multiple sources! History The concept of excessive information is nothing new. Back in the 16th Century, renaissance scholar Erasmus blamed […]

Read More

Key IT skills for modern lawyers

There is often an assumption made that young lawyers (Millennials) entering the profession have the technology skills that my generation (Generation X) and the one that went before me (Baby Boomers) lack. A life brought up with a smartphone in hand equips them to tackle legal technology in a law office standing on their head. […]

Read More

Thinking about our digital afterlives

The internet is now not something used only by younger generations but by all ages as the digital world continues to grow apace. The ONS also reports that, since 2011, the percentage of adults aged 65 years and over who had never used the internet has declined by 27 per cent. The digital world now […]

Read More

Airbnb should be seen as a digital service provider

Airbnb has been a phenomenal success since it was launched just over a decade ago, arguably creating more choice for travellers seeking accommodation while providing a user friendly platform which allows homeowners to rent out a spare room easily. However, it has also faced mounting criticism from various quarters: city officials claim that investors snap […]

Read More

Porn age checks delayed (again)

Internet regulation has been very much in the public eye lately, particularly following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the government recently published its Online Harms White Paper which seeks to address some of the concerns surrounding the ‘Wild West Web’. One of the key issues regularly raised is the protection of children from exposure to […]

Read More