The following content has been provided by the panel presenting on this topic during the afternoon on Day 2 of ICLR 2019. Synopsis The panel will focus on sexual harassment in the legal profession as a regulatory issue, and explore the regulatory issues that can arise in the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in sexual…
UK Competition and Markets Authority to research Scottish legal services market
The Competition and Markets Authority has issued the following press release regarding its impending research into certain aspects of the Scottish legal services market to support the Scottish Government’s response to the Roberton Review. The following release was published 17 June 2019. This work has been prompted by the Roberton Review, an Independent Review of…
Four steps legal regulators can take to embrace their data
Data has always been a foundational part of the practice of law. However, the convenience, accessibility, and speed of digital mediums is transforming the discipline from within. Law firms are stepping up the plate leveraging their internal data, as well as industry data to make their practice and delivery of services more efficient and effective….
Colorado Lawyer Self-Assessment Program yields analytical insights
Colorado Supreme Court Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel started developing its lawyer self-assessment program more than two years ago, immediately after a seminal workshop on proactive, risk-based regulation at the 41st ABA National Conference of Professional Responsibility in May 2015. The new resource is a leading facet of a larger shift toward proactive management-based regulation, which aims to…
Transparency lies at the heart of Consumer Satisfaction
In January, the Legal Services Board (LSB) of England & Wales released its Regulatory Performance: Transitional Assessment Review looking at the transitional assessment of each legal services regulatory body against the LSB’s regulatory performance standards. The report found that it had “sufficient assurance that the regulatory bodies have met the minimum required level of performance…
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…
High Court Sends Back Bar Membership Row
The U.S. Supreme Court sent back a case challenging a nearly 30-year-old precedent allowing mandatory bar membership. The case took aim at the county’s first mandatory bar, North Dakota’s, which required membership in the state’s bar association as a condition to practice law as early as 1921, according to the American Bar Association. Although the state…
Indiana professional rules limit lawyers’ speech about judges
The Indiana Lawyer has released an article tackling one of the legal sector’s most contentious issues – Rule of Professional Conduct 8.2(a), which governs lawyers’ speech about judges. Lawyers, it seems, don’t want to address the topic for fear of being perceived as speaking critically of the judiciary, while judges seemingly don’t want to discuss situations…
A wave of violence against lawyers is crippling the Philippines’ justice system
The slaying earlier this month of a prominent human rights lawyer in the Philippines who worked on behalf of poor suspects accused of drug-related crimes has sparked a renewed outcry over President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs. The lawyer, Benjamin Ramos, was gunned down by two unidentified assailants on Nov. 6—the 34th lawyer to be…
Platform Economy in Legal Profession: An Empirical Study on Online Legal Service Providers in China
Platform economy breaks into the legal profession by pooling lawyers with different specializations into a simple user-friendly platform, consolidating the lower-tier supply side of the legal market and generating economy of scale. This paper is the very first empirical piece looking into China’s online legal service portals. It is found that, the intermediary functions of…