Time for Staff Awareness Sessions by Sponsor Alchemy

Time for Staff Awareness Sessions by Sponsor Alchemy   A recent report by the Institute of Directors (IoD) based on a survey by the IoD and Barclays Bank reported that whilst 95% of respondents considered cyber security to be important to their business 45% still lacked a formal cyber security strategy. Some 40% of respondents would not know who to contact if they were the victim of an attack.   The report says: "Over the last 12 months, the number of cyber security incidents has continued to increase, and more and more it is being demonstrated that it isn’t just ‘the usual suspects’ being attacked. From Lincolnshire County Council to Tesco Bank,...

LawCare - Mental Health: Are we Thriving or Surviving?

LawCare - Mental Health: Are we Thriving or Surviving? Mental Health: Are We Thriving or Surviving? We all have mental health, just as we have physical health. Mental healthincludes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being, and affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.  Mental healthissues range from the worries we all experience as part of everyday life, to serious long-term conditions. It can be easy to dismiss mental health problems as something that happen to other people, but research shows that 1 in 4 of us will experience them each year. And the legal commu...

FRS 102 - Recognising income in law firms - is our firm doing it right? By SPONSOR PKF Francis Clark LLP

FRS 102 - Recognising income in law firms - is our firm doing it right? By SPONSOR PKF Francis Clark LLP Many partners in law firms will have the terms FRS 5 and UITF40 etched in their memories and will immediately recollect the cash flow horrors and transitional accounting complications of moving from a cash basis of accounting to a full accruals basis in respect on income. Whilst we all thought this issue was closed unfortunately more recent interpretations of a new accounting standard have called a specific, but important, part of income recognition in law firms into question again. Briefly, in terms of background, FRS 102 is an accounting standard that ha...

Self Hacking aka Pen Testing by SPONSOR - Alchemy

Self Hacking aka Pen Testing by SPONSOR - Alchemy Self Hacking aka Pen Testing  Businesses are being exposed to an exponential number of potential threats, each of which could severely damage their reputation and their bottom line. But what can a firm do? Of course they can (and should) conduct regular risk assessments, adopt a multi-layer approach to cyber resilience, train their staff and keep them constantly updated on potential threats. But they should also use techniques such as Penetration (or Pen) Testing to determine how far a hacker could get into their business and then rapidly take steps to remedy any identified shortcomings.   Put simply Penetr...

President's Review

President's Review First things first, Happy new Year to you all!   The first couple of days (or for some, weeks) back after the Christmas break is, I find, fairly challenging. After just getting used to replacing emails and phone calls with the far more enjoyable gratuitous    eating and drinking, you are then rudely brought back to reality with the chime or unnerving “buzz” of the message just received in the inbox or on the smart phone.   I am all one for technology, and in fact I positively embrace it, but our desire to fulfil, or even surpass, our clients’ expectations, means we are becoming slaves to our smart phones, which, as I keep tell...

DASLS Annual General Meeting on 25 April 2017

DASLS Annual General Meeting on 25 April 2017 Nominations invited for the Society’s main Committee and proposed changes to the Memorandum and Articles of Association   It is again the time of year when we invite members of the Society to help DASLS by seeking to join the main Committee and help with the Committee’s work.   The main Committee is at the heart of the work and decision making of the Society and also helps to co-ordinate the important work of the many Sub-Committees. As a result membership of the main Committee can make a real difference to the Society and to the working life of solicitors across our two counties.   The Committee is mad...