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19 June 2015 / Mark Surguy , Rob Jones , Tracey Stretton
Issue: 7657 / Categories: Features , Profession
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Looking ahead

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2015 and beyond: are lawyers impervious to change? Mark Surguy & Rob Jones share their thoughts with Tracey Stretton

A lawyer speaking recently on the future of law at Harvard with leading business and legal thinkers observed that the legal profession has proved uniquely impervious to change (“At Harvard Law, Talk of Disruptive Innovation”). Will that change? If your whole life is recorded, as is looking increasingly likely, perhaps all you will ever need to resolve a legal dispute is a search tool capable of working across multiple media formats, a screen for looking at the results, and someone with experience helping with your analysis.

Perhaps we are already there. The Irish High Court in the first ruling of its kind in Europe has approved the use of predictive coding (a form of artificial intelligence) in the document disclosure process ( Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Ltd & ors v Quinn & ors [2015] IEHC 175). The judge stated that in the disclosure of large data sets, technology assisted review

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

London Solicitors Litigation Association—John McElroy

London Solicitors Litigation Association—John McElroy

Fieldfisher partner appointed president as LSLA marks milestone year

Kingsley Napley—Kirsty Churm & Olivia Stiles

Kingsley Napley—Kirsty Churm & Olivia Stiles

Firm promotes two lawyers to partnership across employment and family

Foot Anstey—five promotions

Foot Anstey—five promotions

Firm promotes five lawyers to partnership across key growth areas

NEWS
Freezing orders in divorce proceedings can unexpectedly ensnare third parties and disrupt businesses. In NLJ this week, Lucy James of Trowers & Hamlins explains how these orders—dubbed a ‘nuclear weapon’—preserve assets but can extend far beyond spouses to companies and business partners 
A Court of Appeal ruling has clarified that ‘rent’ must be monetary—excluding tenants paid in labour from statutory protection. In this week's NLJ, James Naylor explains Garraway v Phillips, where a tenant worked two days a week instead of paying rent
Thousands more magistrates are to be recruited, under a major shake-up to speed up and expand the hiring process
Three men wrongly imprisoned for a combined 77 years have been released—yet received ‘not a penny’ in compensation, exposing deep flaws in the justice system. Writing in NLJ this week, Dr Jon Robins reports on Justin Plummer, Oliver Campbell and Peter Sullivan, whose convictions collapsed amid discredited forensics, ‘oppressive’ police interviews and unreliable ‘cell confessions’
A quiet month for employment cases still delivers key legal clarifications. In his latest Employment Law Brief for NLJ, Ian Smith reports that whistleblowing protection remains intact even where disclosures are partly self-serving, provided the worker reasonably believes they serve the ‘public interest’ 
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