Moving the Goalposts – Risk Management Survey Part 4

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Discussion over scrapping the single professional indemnity insurance renewal date and consigning the assigned risks pool to history has reignited. LB reassesses the state of play

In our report last year, it seemed that the debate over whether to move away from a single renewal date for law firms’ professional indemnity insurance (PII) had been settled. Insurers, brokers and risk advisers, such as Marsh, felt that it hadn’t been thought through properly. Risk managers at the top-150 law firms surveyed couldn’t see the benefits of staggering renewal dates. Even the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) itself, after taking advice from various corners of the industry, declared the likelihood of scrapping the single renewal date for solicitors’ PII as ‘improbable’.

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Moving Targets – Risk Management Survey: Part 1

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2011 was always going to be a turbulent year, but the arrival of several new challenges has put risk teams under greater pressure than ever.

There’s never been a more important – or perhaps a more stressful – time to be a risk manager at a law firm. Previous Legal Business and Marsh risk management and professional indemnity reports have dealt with the need to properly establish a risk culture and gain effective buy-in from the wider firm in anticipation of major changes that were just around the corner.

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Round the Houses – Office Moves

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From upwardly mobile US firms to national practices with ambitious City plans, we analyse the winners and losers of law firm property.

It’s early February, ten days before Pinsent Masons moves in and the final touches are being made to the firm’s new London offices. Carpets are being fitted, a problem with the lift fixed and the IT guys are looking confused in front of their fancy new AV equipment.

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Kop Kings – Liverpool FC

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From the fields of Anfield Road to the offices on Bunhill Row, the takeover of Liverpool Football Club was played out in the full glare of the courts and the press. Legal Business talks to the key legal players

When John William Henry II descended the curving flight of stairs into the cool, inconspicuous client reception at Slaughter and May’s offices on Bunhill Row on the afternoon of 15 October 2010, he was met by an unusual sight. As the threshold of a law firm that has long prided itself on its understated manner, it’s usually exceptionally quiet. But that afternoon there was little evidence of calm: pandemonium had taken hold.

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Litigation round table

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Trends in international commercial litigation were to the fore in the second Legal Business round table in conjunction with McCann FitzGerald. From the globalisation of disputes to rising levels of disclosure and tougher regulators there was plenty on the agenda

There has arguably never been a better time to be a litigator. Although the much-anticipated tsunami of litigation has not hit the market, there has been a discernible rise in disputes, which more often than not require a litigator to keep them out of the courts.

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In the soup

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Historically, the largest law firms have had a patchy relationship with the profession’s regulators. Can the Solicitors Regulation Authority build bridges?

Martin Baker, head of risk and compliance at Taylor Wessing, is sitting in a boardroom in front of a mountain of documents. He has only just read through the first few pages of the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) second consultation paper on its proposed new code of conduct. With a worried look on his face, he mentions that, in order to bring his firm’s current risk and compliance handbook up to date, he may as well start implementing the changes now before they come into force next October. Continue reading “In the soup”