Clifford Chance has signed up the College of Law (CoL) to run every aspect of vocational training for its future trainee solicitors. The school will now be the sole provider of the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL), the Trainee Litigation Programme (TLP) and Professional Skills Course (PSC) for all Clifford Chance trainees.

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This news came on the back of BPP Law School retaining the mandate to provide an LPC to a consortium of five firms. Read more.

That piece of news led me to investigate Continued Professional Education initiatives at the College of Law:

Continuing professional education may be offered by a professional association, a university, a government agency or a "for-profit" provider. In many professions people are obliged, or at least expected, to attend these activities to maintain currency, or in other words to upgrade and to keep up with new developments. Such learning commonly resembles that which is undertaken in university, although there are significant differences including the absence of formal assessment requirements.

You can read about the Bar Vocational Course at the City University in London, here.

Profits per equity partner have gone up 28% at top UK law firms, with them taking home an average of 1.1 million pounds.

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The Guardian reports that Cliffoprd Chance has announced that it would outsource much of its administration work to India, in what will be the biggest move offshore ever undertaken in the legal profession.

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Clifford Chance has announced that a team of lawyers will focus on an Indian securities and capital markets practice from Singapore. Leading lawyers include Edward Bradley, Rahul Guptan and Chris Holland. Read more.

Jordan Furlong over at Law21 is faced with a dilemma: does the constant blogging over the same issues, reinforce the problems?

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First a report in TheLawyer on October 30th, stating that the new position of the Bar Council of India, "stops short of reports in the Indian press last week that the Indian Bar Council would consider applications of UK-based firms only if they allowed Indian lawyers to practice in the UK, on the basis of reciprocity." Read it here.

Then a report in Mint on Nov 3rd, that the BCI is is 'considering a calibrated approach premised on a “formula of reciprocity”.' Read more.

The Independent reports on more and more UK law firms looking to cut costs for the duration of the downturn by sending tasks including conveyancing, accident claims and due diligence investigations to young lawyers in India.

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At least six City firms have applied for new liberalised licences to practise local law in Singapore, including Ashurst, DLA Piper, Herbert Smith and Norton Rose.

Around five licences are expected be awarded under the system, which goes beyond the current local joint venture (JV) model which allows foreign firms to practise local law in restrictive alliances with local firms. Around 20 firms are thought to have applied for the licences.

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 The Lawyer reports that banks are advising several of the UK's top firms to "merge, sell off or restructure their businesses" to take care of financial difficulties.

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"Norton Rose has expanded its trainee recruitment drive to include students from Indian colleges", reports Legal Week.

Rahul Jindal's blog has taken note of a trend of large law technology companies aligning themselves with LPO service vendors.

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An interesting thought at JDBliss - How does a good work/life balance benefit the client?

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The Washington Post has an article on the hard times of the financial crisis heralding the end of the billable hour.

"New efforts to jettison hourly billing are being driven by in-house corporate lawyers, who say they have grown frustrated seeing fees to outside firms soar even as they slash their own costs."

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Above the Law  is sceptical, saying the suggestions in the article may be premature. Read here.

The Financial Times has released its annual ranking of Innovative Lawyers.

Says the report:

"The idea that such a traditionally conservative profession could actively pursue change and develop new ways of working was seen by some as implausible. But as our annual reports have consistently shown, the early sceptics were wide of the mark.
Far from being a sector that lacks creative thinking, law firms and in-house lawyers are making laudable efforts to improve efficiency and raise the level of service they provide to their clients. In this year's report, based on 600 submissions, 690 interviews and more than six months of rigorous research, we have expanded our coverage of the legal profession across Europe.
Among the key trends revealed in this report are the growth of outsourcing of legal processes to low-cost centres such as India and the increased standardisation of legal advice through the intelligent use of technology."

You can read the report here.

Metodology here.

The accompanying article by Reena Sengupta and Paul Solman is here.

"But LPO may have a huge growth spurt as top corporate clients in the US and Europe cut costs. For example, in the European general counsel section, both Deutsche Bank and BT cited their outsourcing and off-shoring initiatives to India as significant innovations. Cost pressures, always intense for general counsel, have intensified as the financial implications of e-discovery work, which involves scrutinising electronic paper trails and requires armies of associates, hit home.

In private practice, the big global law firms Clifford Chance and Baker & McKenzie are focusing their back office operations in India and Manila, respectively. Clifford Chance has gone a step further and is now moving paralegal work out to India.

Even more conservative law firms such as Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer have begun to experiment with outsourcing to India. The firm’s managing partner, Ted Burke, says: “LPO is inevitable and will radically change the legal market. We will see more unbundling of the way legal services are currently delivered.”

Mr Burke believes this could have an impact on the pyramid structure of law firms, where partners sit at the apex above a broad base of associates."

Richard Lloyd of legalweek.com throws light on why the UK firms might just be in a better position to face the financial crisis, compared to their US rivals.

"For UK law firms, the strategy has been geographic: spreading their risk across several continents."

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A recent study by Kerma Partners, in conjunction with Redwood Analytics, a property of LexisNexis, shows that grades and school rank aren't the best predictors of lawyer success at their firms. Read more about it on Legal Blog Watch.

Meanwhile, Leah M. Christensen of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, has published a study. The conclusions were:

Lawyering Skills Grade was the strongest predictor of law student success. In contrast, the LSAT score was the weakest predictor of law school success. This study also found that law students who did well in their Lawyering Skills classes tended to be mastery-oriented learners, and that law students who were mastery-oriented learners were more successful in law school overall. It is time for significant reform of legal education including the full integration of skills within the law school curriculum.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is to maintain a mandatory system for solicitors wanting to practise as advocates in the High Courts after plans to replace the system with a voluntary accreditation process were slammed by critics, including the College of Law.

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Recruitment agencies are receiving a flood of resumes from American lawyers who're looking to move overseas.

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Two organisations, MPF and Brand Finance, are working with companies specialising in client feedback surveys, such as Acritas, to rank the brand value of professional service firms.

Recently, Legal Week reported that they have re-engineered their methodology to canvas in-house opinion as well. 

The report also states that interest in understanding the value of a firm's brand has risen ahead of the coming into force of the Legal Service Act, which for the first time, will permit external investment in law firms.

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