All Law Gazette articles in Archive – Page 1195
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Peak practice
Matthew Davies, a partner at Hill Dickinson in Liverpool, got in touch after receiving a text message from a client stuck in a blizzard 4,000 metres up Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in the Caucasus (and, indeed, Europe). His client wanted legal advice after an expedition member was injured: what ...
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Rat race
No jokes about rodents and sinking ships, please. The above are esteemed members of the City of London Solicitors Company, sister to the City of London Law Society, which marks its centenary this year. This was not a Pied Piper-esque flushing out of City lawyers via the Thames. It was ...
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Sweet sixteen
A trio of doughty legal wordsmiths can look forward to a bubble this Christmas after solving – or nearly solving – our recent anagram competition. John Seagrave of A Broken Card (aka Barker and Co) in Hull, together with Giles Bennett of Devonshires (sod his nerve!) win special plaudits for ...
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LCS to cut spend by 10% next year
The Legal Complaints Service (LCS) is to spend 10% less next year than it will in 2008 as the organisation begins to wind down, according to board papers made public last week. In the year beginning January 2009, the service’s budget, which comes from the ...
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Contingency fees 'nothing to worry about' - new study
The case for contingency fees in England and Wales received another boost this week after research seen by the Gazette found that their use in employment tribunals throws up few major concerns. The study – the first of its kind – said contingency fees in tribunals ...
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ACAS: conciliation returns to the toolbox
Timing is often crucial. Do you wish that you had exchanged your Icelandic individual savings account for premium bonds (now the geriatric pin-up of the savings world) earlier this year? You would be far from alone. The ability to dance on the beat can often make or break you.
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High-visibility jackets accompany community sentences
From this week offenders carrying out community sentences must wear high-visibility jackets branded with the ‘community payback’ logo. Justice secretary Jack Straw (pictured, left, with home secretary Jacqui Smith, right) said: ‘The taxpayer has an absolute right to know what unpaid work is being done to pay back to them ...
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Anthony Edwards presented with outstanding achievement award
Anthony Edwards, senior partner at TV Edwards and Gazette contributor, was presented with the outstanding achievement award by Cherie Booth QC at the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Awards 2008. Other winners included Jackson & Canter, which won Legal Aid Law Firm of the ...
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KBF court action threat
Key Business Finance (KBF), the legal lender currently in administration, has been threatened with legal action by 10 law firms over advance payments made to the company. The 10 firms feature in a list, compiled by administrators Ernst & Young last week, of 125 firms ...
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Duty prosecutors advice plea
Duty prosecutors should provide early legal advice to police officers so that weak cases can be stopped at an earlier stage, according to an inspection report of new charging arrangements. The finding comes from a joint review of charging arrangements by Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution ...
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Calls to raise the game against human trafficking
Any lawyer who assumes that human trafficking issues are solely for police, prosecutors and the media should heed the recent Court of Appeal judgment in R v O [2008] EWCA 2835. In this case, defence lawyers were scathingly criticised for failing to recognise and act on indications that their client ...
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Arbitration soars
Demand for arbitration has soared this year, figures from the London Court of International Arbitration reveal. The court has heard 198 cases to date – 61 more than last year and 66% more than the average over the previous four years. ...
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Cultivating a wine’s connection with its area
Hurrying through Bordeaux airport last September, I spotted the chairman of a very smart London wine merchant waiting to board my plane. After a fair bit of manoeuvring on my part I managed to catch up with him, not least because I was interested to hear his opinion on the ...
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Bar raises court fears
The Bar Council has alleged that Crown Court cases are being disrupted because barristers are being forced to undertake litigators’ work when solicitors fail to attend hearings. In a letter to the Legal Services Commission’s Criminal Defence Service, the chairman of the council’s remuneration committee, ...
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Bar-room brawl
‘Putting advocacy at the heart of everything we do’ is the slogan of public relations giant Weber Shandwick. No doubt this philosophy is well honed when making the case for blue-chip clients like General Motors and Microsoft. But it’s especially appropriate when it comes to Obiter’s favourite Weber Shandwick client, ...
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CCBE warning on the threat of notaries
A backdoor bid by continental notaries to beat off the threat of competition is meeting fierce resistance from lawyers across Europe. At its plenary session in Brussels last weekend, the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) abandoned its historically neutral position on the notarial profession to pass ...
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Cold comfort
It’s that time of the year. You’ve used all your holiday entitlement and in a desperate need for a day off to do some Christmas shopping or recover from one of many parties, you pull a sickie. Not for those at personal injury practice Kingslegal. The ...
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Committed to helping you through difficult economic times
One issue that all firms are grappling with today is of course the downturn in the economy. While it is impossible to be precise, it is clear that the recession will be deeper and longer than many anticipated and the next 12 months will be very challenging for us all. ...
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Coode puts his oar into the law
Ed Coode MBE, Olympic gold medallist oarsman and now trainee solicitor at Burges Salmon, Bristol, says his former life as a professional sportsman had much in common with his fledgling career in the law, ‘like sitting on my arse going backwards, for instance’.
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Legal 'super panels' for local councils
Three ‘super panels’ of law firms and barristers’ chambers are being formed to service about 30 local authorities across England, the Gazette can reveal. Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe, is tendering for a panel of around 25 firms on behalf of 17 ...