Special report: SJ Live 2014

Nearly 500 delegates gathered at the Emirates Stadium in London last week for Solicitors Journal's award-winning conference, SJ Live, to hear a host of distinguished speakers discuss best practice and share their experiences on a multitude
of hot topics.

In the civil litigation stream, one top costs judge said he
was "worried" by the new proportionality tests and suggested they are a danger
to the profession.

Master Haworth said the
new method of assessing the proportionality of costs was arbitrary and does not make
"any logical or legal sense."

"What worries me as a
costs judge is the new [proportionality] test… It's subjective, it's almost totally in the eye of the assessor. It's not
an objective test," he said.

Haworth said that, in practice, after assessing that a proposed costs budget presents "a reasonable figure", he must
again cut costs.

"I am required to stand back and say, 'Well, hang on, that still looks too high, I'll just arbitrarily slash some more off,"' he said.

Haworth also said that legal professionals must accept that budgeting is here to stay and is
"a legal skill that needs to be acquired by solicitors and legal secretaries for years to come".

Tax transparency

John Riches, a consultant member at Withers and
co-founder of RMW Law, drew
a large crowd of private client practitioners for his session on offshore trusts and the wealth planning climate.

Citing the effects of 9/11 and the global financial crisis of 2008, he said: "The initiatives being developed to stop the financing of terrorism and tax evasion are being extended to the rest of the world and are creating a greater burden for compliant structures."

With FATCA due to come into force on 1 July 2014 and the European Union considering an EU-wide 'trust register', Riches advised "to plan and prepare for
a completely new paradigm".

The complete terms of compliance for the EU trust register are yet to be announced but he warned against implementing some of the "wacky" penalties for non-compliance in France. Since November 2013, any changes to the details of a French trust must be reported within one month, and a failure to do so results in a penalty of 12.5 per cent of global trust assets annually.

It is still not clear whether the register will be accessible by the public or exclusively by competent authorities; he said that a public register "could destroy a lot of people's lives at an early age".

He added that FATCA has created a 'sea change' in thinking with jurisdictions aiming to copy the US legislation to create a network of 'information statutes', and inter-governmental agreements to access private financial information.

"The transparency era that
we think we're currently in will
be as nothing to the one we will be in within a couple of years,"
he concluded.

Online battlefield

Traditionally, conveyancers have garnered new business through recommendations from the friends and family of existing clients. However, that may all
be about to change.

Speaking on how small conveyancing firms can punch above their weight, Paul Hajek, principal at Clutton Cox, said that content marketing through a firm's website is key to developing new client relationships: "Advertising, marketing and PR is now all bundled up. The lines are blurred. You have to have a digital profile."

Hajek suggested having meaningful and informative content, such as blog posts: "Google is a monster, you need to feed it. If you post it, they will come. Give clients what they want; don't leave them hungry."

While returns on the investment in online profiles are difficult to prove, Hajek said: "Social media is the kindling and bellows to ignite your law firm. But be pragmatic and persevere. You can't be all things to all people and it does take time.
You want to get your name out there and you can do that now
by making connections at the speed of light."

Pragmatic PI

Personal injury solicitors should avoid a 'wait-and-see approach' but instead act pragmatically and immediately, according to one top silk.

Speaking on catastrophic injuries, Grahame Aldous QC of
9 Gough Square said: "You can have subtle injuries that make it difficult for the victim to interact with others, to hold down a job and to be reliable. Damage to the frontal lobe can be difficult to prove and won't always show
up on scans.

"Two years is the standard period where such injuries will start to patter off. After this period the prospect of improvement decreases."

Aldous believes it is important to start working with the family immediately: "A lot can be done in this period in terms of arranging for rehabilitation and supporting the families of the injured client. They will be going through a grieving process in terms of losing the person that was their loved one. They may need help with benefit payments and obtaining interim payments."

Child rearing

Meanwhile, in the family stream,
a leading solicitor was concerned about what he describes as the "coyness" of some lawyers who do not to spell out what arrangements should be made for children in pre-nuptial agreements.

Simon Bruce, a partner at Farrer & Co, said: "I am troubled by it. It seems to be perfectly obvious that parties will have an idea about how their children should be brought up. There is nothing wrong in saying that in an agreement. Some people would say that religion is much more important than money and therefore it is much more important to spell out just how a child should be brought up."

Those lawyers who don't counsel on such matters may
be missing an opportunity: "We have massive responsibility. It is a fantastic opportunity for us as family lawyers and it is really quite exciting. Advising is difficult and pre-nups are not easy things to do, in my experience."

Broken market

The cost of professional indemnity insurance (PII) has become particularly burdensome on the legal profession. This year, 136 firms ceased to practise having failed to secure PII cover. Is the PII market broken? One market specialist claimed it is.

Mark Carver, head of UK PI
at Miller Insurance Services,
said: "There has been a clear breakdown between the SRA
and insurers and there has been a deep mistrust between them for some time. The SRA hasn't helped the insurance buyer."

Carver agreed that the regulator's recent consultation should take place but said the SRA should take a "common-sense approach". "Your regulator has crafted unnecessary issues," he said.

"The environment of the 2014 renewal, which the SRA has created, is a problem for all firms: 800 left the profession in the last two years. I would expect that PII had something to do with that." SJ

Reporting by John van der Luit-Drummond, Laura Clenshaw and Binyamin Ali

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