Some firms have known this for a long time – there is a list of niche topic or geo legal websites on the excellent resource provided by Delia Venables. If you look at Delia’s list you will find some good sites  but many that have been abandoned, which raises the other issue. As with any marketing, sustained effort, commitment and investment are needed. It’s not enough anymore just to create a site and put 5 pages of content on it and leave it. google is onto that tactic as well, and new content is important and to not have what is often called a “thin website”.

In short, the rewards are there for those who commit to an online presence. many lawyers are now embracing social media- this is great, generally free, except for time spent and useful, but it should not be forgotten that the market for online services is largely consumer, and consumers will generally go straight to google to find what they want, so a website and optimisation work, which takes time and hard cash, is really where the action is.

As examples of a firm that really gets the internet, you may want to visit this solicitors site. They also have a number of new microsites dealing with issues such as wills and company law.

Prepack administrations and insolvency have caused a great deal of controversy. Certainly, they leave a very bitter taste in the mouth for creditors for very understandable reasons. The main ones are :-

• Creditors may lose out
• The previous owners of the business are often directly or indirectly involved with starting again without debts
• Businesses that behave properly and run their businesses prudently face unfair competition from the new entity set up free of debt

Plans for legal changes are only at an early stage but are likely to involve some forewarning being required of the prepack solution to creditors and perhaps others. As things stand, creditors get even more infuriated by the fact they only find out what has happened i.e the prepack has happened, when there is little they can do about it practically.

The success of the Oyster card system for London Transport is being replicated so that payment can be made by a contact point on a mobile phone, and for use in a myriad of different shops. Orange are the first mobile company to roll out the ‘Quick Tap’ system. Other points to note in relation to this are :-

• customers can make purchases of up to £15.00
• 50,000 shops nationwide have already agreed to accept payments this way, including Eat, Little Chef  and McDonald’s
• The system currently only works on the Orange system and on one phone, the Samsung Tocco Quick Tap
• up to £100.00 a time needs to be first transferred to the mobile phone account.

It can only have increased the public’s ire about bankers and the so-called fat cat culture that there has also appeared to be a lack of transparency as to what went wrong in addition to a perceived lack of accountability.

The incumbent head of our  top financial regulator, Hactor Sants, seems to be aware of this dynamic and has promised to publish full reports into future bank collapses. Whilst the public will ultimately be more concerned about avoidance of a future bank failure and accountability of senior figures, this new commitment to transparency is clearly welcome news.