Making it easier to grow your law firm

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This section covers succession, specialisation, mergers, selling a law firm, becoming a partner, and business structure

How to plan and execute the process of starting up a new legal practice that is compliant and financially healthy

How to set up your firm’s systems to provide the information that enables you to improve profitability and cashflow

How to avoid professional negligence claims, with examples of common problems and suggested solutions. Plus FAQs on PII

This section only covers SRA Accounts Rules and GDPR at the moment. Compliance for start-ups is covered in the Starting up...

How to protect your law firm from cyber attacks. What steps to take if your systems are hacked

How to recruit and retain a team that is both happy and highly effective, dealing with the HR issues along the way

In marketing, like anything, you need to get the basics right. Otherwise the time and money you invest in marketing will be wasted

How to win new clients, make the most of existing relationships, encourage referrals and generate new leads

How to approach creating a law firm website that works, from agreeing your objectives to making sure you get the results you want

Why lawyers need to know about social media, how to make the most of the opportunities and how to avoid potential pitfalls

How to use PR to build your firm’s reputation; and how to create cost-effective advertising – traditional and online – that delivers results

Avoiding claims. Insurance - overview

James KerrJames Kerr, vice president (Europe) at Travelers, introduces the Avoiding claims. Insurance section. (Updated 5 April 2024)

 

 

Mistakes happen, in law firms like anywhere else. Work piles up. Deadlines arrive. Issues are complex. Key risks get overlooked. But in the legal sector, the cost of such mistakes can be enormous, so professional indemnity insurance is a major expense and avoiding claims is a key objective.

This section opens with a set of 99 FAQs, in two parts: Professional indemnity insurance for law firms FAQs: Part one and Professional indemnity insurance for law firms FAQs: Part two. These FAQs explain how much insurance you need, how to keep your costs down, how to avoid pitfalls when seeking cover, how to make a claim, plus closing down and other special situations.

Next is a helpful set of articles on how to avoid negligence claims, in which the team at Travelers reveal the most common areas of risk to watch out for. The advice is brought to life by all the real-life examples they have included. Most importantly, they suggest ways to organise your work to minimise the risk – and the stress – that is part and parcel of all legal work.

Residential conveyancing generates more negligence claims than any other work area, at the second highest cost.

Commercial conveyancing comes second in the Travelers data showing volumes of claims, but ranks first in terms of cost. Leases and assignments continue to be particular problem areas.

Wills, trusts and probate work ranks third in volume and sixth in cost. Nevertheless, tax errors can be expensive.

Commercial litigation ranks fourth in volume and third in cost. Errors and omissions occur during the day-to-day legal work.

Company and commercial ranks fifth in volume and fourth in cost. When contracts fail to protect a client, the financial damage can be extensive.

A long item called 'Remote working and operational risk' is a useful holistic view of risk in a law firm.

Lastly, we have a series of quarterly three-minute review videos called 'Legal sector risk soundbites', plus a set of three ten-minute videos: Risks for lawyers podcast introduction, Advice risk in legal service delivery and Dishonesty risk in legal service delivery. You can access all of the videos via this website, or directly on the Law Firm Ambition YouTube channel.

We hope you find the site useful – join us on LinkedIn to keep up to date as new content is added.