Abstract The extension of anti-money laundering (AML) controls to lawyers has been a controversial topic since the early 2000s. The legal professions facing these measures have adopted differentiated strategies of response, three examples of which are examined and contrasted in this paper. In the US, the legal profession vocally objected to the measures and has been able to deflect…
AI-Enabled Business Models in Legal Services: From Traditional Law Firms to Next-Generation Law Companies?
What will happen to law firms and the legal profession when the use of artificial intelligence (AI) becomes prevalent in legal services? This paper addresses this question by considering specific AI use cases in legal services, and by identifying four AI-enabled business models (AIBM) which are relatively new to legal services (if not new to…
Lawyer Disciplinary Processes: An Empirical Study of Solicitors’ Misconduct Cases in England and Wales in 2015
Abstract The Legal Services Act 2007 effected major changes in the disciplinary system for solicitors in England Wales. Both the practice regulator, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, and a disciplinary body, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, were reconstituted as independent bodies and given new powers. Our concern is the impact of the Act on the disciplinary system…
Granular Legal Norms: Big Data and the Personalization of Private Law
Against the background of the emerging debate about personalized law, this book chapter explores how BigData and algorithm-based regulation could fundamentally change the design and structure of legal norms: impersonal law based on typifications could be replaced by a more personalized law, based on “granular legal norms”. We argue that the use of legal typifications which is a hallmark of impersonal law can be conceptualized…
Sending the Message: Using Technology to Support Judicial Reporting of Lawyer Misconduct to State Disciplinary Agencies
Despite the strong public interest in effectively regulating lawyers, neither state nor federal courts have developed adequate policies and practices to ensure that lawyers’ misconduct during litigation proceedings is consistently reported to state disciplinary agencies. The reasons for this inconsistency—and the extent to which it should be considered an actual inadequacy and a problem calling for a…
An Australian Study on Lawyer Vulnerability and Legal Misconduct
Vulnerability to Legal Misconduct: Qualitative Study of Regulatory Decisions Involving Problem Lawyers and Their Clients An emerging body of scholarship discusses ‘vulnerability’ as an antecedent of legal misconduct. One conceptualization of vulnerability indicates that an individual has greater susceptibility to risk of harm, and safeguards may protect against that risk of harm. This empirical study…
40 Percent of APAC in-house legal, compliance professionals find regulations a challenge
Some 40 percent of in-house legal and compliance professionals in the Asia-Pacific region find changing local and global regulatory requirements a major challenge, a new report has found. The report, titled “Facing the future: Developing a response to regulatory change” was released jointly by TMF Group and Asia Risk. It found that an alarming 57…
Findings From the IBA’s Directory of Regulators of the Legal Profession
IBA’s Directory of Regulators of the Legal Profession In 2016 the International Bar Association’s Bar Issues Commission published a directory of legal regulators as a resource for the profession. The intention was to identify those who regulate the major stages in the ‘life cycle’ of a lawyer, from qualification/entry to the profession, through ethics and conduct…
SRA Report: Technology and Legal Services
Artificial intelligence (AI) will free up solicitors from lower-level work to carry out more complex tasks, a new report concludes. We have published a paper which looks at innovations in technology affecting the legal service sector. The report shows that rapid developments in AI will mostly be focused on back-office functions, addressing out the less…
The relevance of FATF’s recommendations and fourth round of mutual evaluations to the legal profession
More than two hundred countries in the world have agreed to abide by the anti-money laundering (“AML”) recommendations developed by the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”), which is an intergovernmental organization. This article focuses on the potential impact on the legal profession of FATF’s fourth round of mutual evaluations. During these mutual evaluations, which currently…