Majority ownership reform has been ignored by the Law Society of Scotland in their latest press release. On 20 May, the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament. That day, the Law Society of Scotland issued a press release hailing their decade of campaigning to achieve this. They highlighted the…
The Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament yesterday, 20 May 2025. This was following a raft of amendments being tabled at stage 3. The Law Society of Scotland issued the following statement yesterday: A decade of campaigning by the Law Society of Scotland has resulted in new legislation that…
I almost thought that the Reshaping Legal Services conference, held in London on 6 March 2025, was going to be the first legal conference for some time with no mention of AI. But then it was mentioned. Only once though, and not in the context of legal services. Sophie Wales, Director of Regulatory Policy, Institute…
The Great Big Legal Offsite (GBLO) was held at Ribby Hall Village, Kirkham (near Preston) on 3 July 2024. I know that is now some seven months ago but the day job got in the way before I could, only recently, find the time to finish converting my notes from the conference into this blog…
Blank Page Law. Did it exist 30 years ago? Does it exist today? Richard W Smith posted, the other day on LinkedIn, a link to a post by Seth Godwin that, as Richard put it, is “about how professions have changed over a 30 year period in less than 100 words.” Seth Godwin’s post reads:…
Alternative Business Structures (ABS) are back on track in Scotland after the AGM of the Law Society of Scotland voted in support of them and against the motion by Michael Sheridan and others against them. Prior to the AGM I blogged about why solicitors should support Alternative Business Structures at the AGM. I am pleased…
Solicitors should support alternative business structures at the AGM of the Law Society of Scotland on Thursday. Section 47 to 49 of the Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2010 allowed for the creation of licensed legal service providers (commonly referred to as alternative business structures) in Scotland provided they remain, in effect, in 51% solicitor ownership….
Hallucination v Fugazi. When Large Language Models (LLM) sometimes have a hallucination can we call that a fugazi? I suggested in my last blog post that fugazi (meaning not genuine, fake, a fraud) was possibly a better term than hallucination for incorrect LLM output. A chat with Microsoft Copilot about Hallucination v Fugazi I thought…
What is the connection between moving house, automation, lawyers and GenAI? Well, I recently spent time helping move my mother-in-law out of a house she has been in for 30 years as she downsizes and relocates. As anyone who has moved house knows, it is a major operation. Even more involved when you can’t take…
Elwood is the latest AI for Law start-up to launch on the burgeoning Legal Technology market. Elwood is the brainchild of serial Law Tech entrepreneur Sidney James. I sat down with Sidney to discuss his latest venture and find out what was “real” about Elwood compared to other AI for Law offerings on the market….
A halfway house for Legal Services Regulation Reform in Scotland was confirmed this past week by the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament when they published, on 8 February 2024, their Stage 1 Report on the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill [PDF] (“The Report”). They perhaps did so with…
Are lawyers or machines responsible for errors (otherwise known as hallucinations) in GenAI legal research output? This was a point drawn out in some of the many comments and the, at times, heated debate that flowed from my blog post from last week: ChatGPT + Lawyers v Horizon + The Post Office In that post…
