“A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO CORE PRACTICEIf you are a fee earning solicitor working within a law firm, you need the Law Society’s recently published ‘Guide to Good Practice’ written ‘in-house’. Following the advice here, as the Law Society suggests, will make it easier for you to ‘account to oversight bodies for your actions and help you to run an efficient and profitable practice’. We can scarcely think of better reasons for buying it. In fact, “The Guide” is ‘a unique compilation of questions frequently posed by practitioners to the Law Society’s Practice Advice Service (PAS), together with the answers to those questions’, which apparently numbered over 35,000 in 2008. The ‘Q & A’ style is to be commended as an innovative method to assist good practice set out in 9 “Annex-style” headings which deal with the core activities of solicitors and public access barristers.At last, in one handy paperback (686 pages including index) you have the means to save yourself a considerable amount of time searching for answers to frequently asked questions – all here to hand in this useful volume. ‘In which areas of law is it possible to use a conditional fee agreement’ is a typical example of a typical question. By the way, you’ll find all or most of what you need to know about CFAs and other ‘payment by results’ models summarized in Annex 1B (appended at the front of the book rather than at the end) which covers this often confusing and controversial area quite cogently.The Guide indeed is a response to ’the degree of change that continues to affect the solicitors’ profession,’ particularly following the passage of the Legal Services Act that, as Law Society President Paul Marsh points out, ‘has challenged traditional business practices and introduced new models for the provision of legal services’. The Guide, he adds, ‘should occupy a prime position in the armoury of any practicing solicitor’.Logically structured and written in plain English -- with each chapter providing a Q & A section and practice notes -- the Guide covers in detail the following nine areas of practice and key topics:• Civil Litigation• Conveyancing and property• Costs and fees• Crime• Money laundering• Oaths and affidavits• Practice management• Tax and VAT• Wills and probateThe content of the Guide is based on the information available as at 15 April 2009 and we think all our solicitor colleagues would agree with Paul Marsh that the ‘Guide to Good Practice’ is ‘an essential tool to ease the burden upon all solicitors in the current changing market.’ We like this different approach to an evaluation of core practice questions and are sure you will, too!ISBN: 978-1-85328-734-3”
