All Law Gazette articles in Archive – Page 1221
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News
Into the firing line?
In the show’s best tradition, The Apprentice contestant Anita Shah doesn’t come over as a shrinking violet. But the ‘self-confessed perfectionist’ has a novel strategy for getting ahead in the competition to impress Sir Alan Sugar. Shah reckons that you can be successful by investing ...
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Future perfect?
Your otherwise excellent article on the impact of the recession on the north-west legal scene (see [2009] Gazette, 19 March, 14) was marred by an error regarding the alleged lack of legal training providers in the heart of the city.
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Professional services get their own share index
The world’s first stockmarket index for professional services firms was launched this week at the City headquarters of magic circle firm Allen & Overy. A key aim of the initiative is to educate analysts and institutional investors about the potential benefits of investing in ...
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LDPs go live
The revolution in legal services provision heralded by the 2007 Legal Services Act officially gets under way this week with the advent of legal disciplinary practices. For the first time, law firms can be owned by different types of lawyers, and a proportion of non-lawyers. ...
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The history of the Ponzi scheme
The arrest of financier Bernard Madoff on suspicion of running a $50bn fraud offering to pay a steady if suspicious 12% return on investments in good and bad times has had everyone nodding their heads wisely saying, ‘Oh, yes, a Ponzi scheme’. But how many know who Ponzi was or ...
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Turning to the index
The Gazette did not find its front page hard to fill this week, what with the Smedley report and Abbey’s bombshell for conveyancing firms. It is just possible, however, that the week’s most significant development in respect of legal business is the establishment of the world’s first stockmarket index for ...
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Table manners
Another tale of old-school judiciary reaches us from Andrew Firman of Carter Lemon Camerons in Aldersgate St, London. A nervous articled clerk appears for the first time before the Master and, seeing a handy space on the table in front of him, deposits his bag thereon. ‘Young man,’ booms the ...
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Pay for our offices
I am very encouraged by Jack Straw’s announcement that he thinks it entirely proper that lawyers are paid decent rates and his assertion that we should not expect to be paid more than public sector employees.
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SRA responds to Smedley
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has delivered a measured response to the Smedley report, published today. The chair of the board, Peter Williamson, said he ‘welcomes Nick Smedley's contribution to the wider debate on the future regulation of legal services’.
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Profile
Interview: Christopher Greenwood - QC, law professor and now ICJ judge
His appearance is jovial and his demeanour reflects his occupations. He is precise – he is a barrister after all – and measured, because he teaches undergraduates. But his recent election as one of the 15 permanent judges at the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) raised eyebrows – Northern ...
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Counselling the council
A few days ago saw a major gathering of the municipal great and good as local government solicitors converged on Warwick University for the Solicitors in Local Government annual weekend school.
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Ordering pizza and customer relationship management
It’s one of my missions to get it through law firms’ metaphorical skulls that just because they are unique businesses, it doesn’t mean they can’t learn a huge amount from how other business sectors work. Customer relationship management is a perfect case in point.
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Profile
Interview: Dominic Grieve, shadow justice secretary
Britain could have a Conservative government in little over a year, or even sooner. What would that mean for solicitors? Catherine Baksi spoke to Dominic Grieve QC, the shadow justice secretary, to find out.
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Our paperless future, only partially assured
Yes, I know, you’ve heard it all before. One day soon, a day hiding perversely just out of sight, law firms will realise that shuffling bits of dead tree around is a pretty dumb way of organising their information
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Diversity and monitoring
One has to feel some sympathy for the Solicitors Regulation Authority in connection with its efforts to respond to concerns about diversity.
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We’ve got the technology – now give us law e-books
Some years ago, I plied this trade as an IT journalist and remember writing in breathless tones about e-ink/e-paper, and about how it could revolutionise how we look at the shifting balance between paper and computers for storage of documents and ad hoc notes.
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Judges’ pensions and fiscal meltdown
The late Peter Cook famously lamented that he could have been a judge, but never had the Latin. One can understand his ambition from reading the report of the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB), published this week.
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Paperless lawyering, part three
As a lawyer of a certain age – ie I started out before PCs and emails, when cutting and pasting documents actually meant cutting and pasting typed documents and then photocopying them – I am more used to handling paper, printing out documents and scribbling handwritten notes on them