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Impact of coronavirus on legal profession

23 June 2020
Issue: 7892 / Categories: Legal News , Covid-19 , Profession
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Wills and probate practitioners saw no change in business levels, conveyancing was hardest hit, 60% of firms furloughed employees and 15% had to make redundancies, a survey of law firms has found

Company and commercial was the practice area hit second hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic, as companies pressed the pause button, and crime suffered the third hardest hit as all but essential criminal cases stopped. The in-depth survey, ‘The impact of COVID-19 on legal businesses’, was carried out among 100 UK law firms by legal technology company dps software, in May (see https://bit.ly/3hU6GNj).

The survey predicts lawyers in certain practice areas may be in demand post-lockdown for unhappy reasons―business turmoil generated by the economic downturn will create work for insolvency and M&A practitioners and employment lawyers will be required to advise on redundancies. Divorce rates could rise due to the stress of lockdown. Criminal practitioners are also likely to see a surge in demand―figures obtained by the Criminal Bar Association showed a backlog of more than 40,000 cases as of 24 May.

Issue: 7892 / Categories: Legal News , Covid-19 , Profession
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NEWS
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
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