All Law Gazette articles in Archive – Page 1358
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News
Lawyers 'optimistic' over legal services reform
Alternative business structures will bring more work for high street and other firms as the big brands educate the public that they need to make a will, solicitors have suggested in a recent report. However, practitioners also indicated that the cost of regulation is driving some ...
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Will tender contracts survive government’s legal aid strategy review?
Over the last four months I have been kept busy writing about the outcomes of the Legal Services Commission’s tender exercises. First there was crime, followed by mental health, immigration, family and social welfare.
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Chancery Lane appoints chief assessors to lead best practice panels
The Law Society has begun the process of updating and reviewing its professional accreditation schemes with the appointment of three chief assessors. The new chief assessors are Law Society council member for child care law Christina Blacklaws, who will lead the children law panel; Stuart Barlow, ...
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Marcoms – get the basics right
Recent posts from Clare Rodway and Richard Cohen explore new ideas in the changing market for legal services. Both provide useful indicators of future marketing and business process methods that firms need to consider as part of their planning.
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City lawyer leads push for Indian market liberalisation
Clifford Chance senior partner Stuart Popham, the sole UK law firm representative in the prime minister’s trade delegation to India, is expected to meet determined opposition from the country’s legal establishment to any attempt at opening up the market to foreign law firms.
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Solicitorsfromhell owner in second High Court libel action
The owner of website solicitorsfromhell.co.uk is facing a second High Court libel action, the Gazette has learned. The news comes as it emerged that website owner Rick Kordowski has been invited by the BBC to assist with an investigation into alleged sharp practices by solicitors as ...
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Halliwells administrator’s cash management warning
Professional firms must pay ‘far greater attention to cash management’ following the break-up of north-west firm Halliwells, the firm’s administrator warned last week. A deal to sell Halliwells’ Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield operations to three former rivals was completed last week, and Halliwells has now been ...
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End of the line for police station advice?
Cuts in the provision of legal aid are perhaps an inevitable if uncomfortable consequence of the economic mess that we find ourselves in. However, we now learn that justice secretary Ken Clarke’s new-found enthusiasm for keeping offenders out of the prison system is matched by contemplation of a plan to ...
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Law firms entitled to set compulsory retirement age
A former law firm partner who accused his firm of acting unlawfully by making him retire at 65 has lost his age discrimination case in the Court of Appeal. Leslie Seldon, now 69, a former civil litigation partner at Kent law firm Clarkson Wright Jakes (CWJ), ...
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Employment and age-old problem
I was very upset to read the letter, titled 'Too old for the legal profession', in which a 59-year-old solicitor said he had been told that he is on the ‘scrapheap’ and unemployable. What on earth are firms thinking? What a fantastic opportunity to employ someone who is likely to ...
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The tender miseries of a legal aid lawyer
Back in March, when Jack Straw announced plans to turn the Legal Services Commission into an executive agency, the Ministry of Justice assured us that the department had already assumed tighter control of the quango. At the time, the Law Society called for greater clarity in respect of the ‘parameters ...
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Brothers in arms
Obiter heard tell this week of an intriguing tale of sibling rivalry – two brothers pitted against each other in a public battle. But this time it was not David and Ed. No indeed: Kamar Uddin, principal at Birmingham firm Res Ipsa, was ...
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Family law supplier base ‘decimated’ by LSC tender
The family law supplier base has been ‘decimated’ by the ‘shock’ outcome of the Legal Services Commission’s tender for civil legal aid work, lawyers groups alleged this week. The Law Society and Legal Aid Practitioners Group said member feedback indicated that around half of firms that ...
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Booth inconvenienced
Some women still reckon the profession treats them pretty shoddily at times, but according to Cherie Booth QC, things used to be a heck of a lot worse. Giving the Association of Women Solicitors’ Fiona Woolf lecture at the Law Society last week, Booth recalled ...
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Personal injury lawyers issue warning over CFA reform
Personal injury lawyers warned that the government was taking ‘a step backwards’ this week as it announced that it will consult on Lord Justice Jackson’s plans for reform of the way lawyers are paid in civil cases. Justice minister Jonathan Djanogly said the government will focus ...
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Lord chief justice defends trial by jury
The lord chief justice emphasised the importance of trial by jury last week as the Court of Appeal overturned two High Court decisions that trials could proceed without a jury. Sir Igor Judge said that judge-alone trials should only proceed ‘as a last resort’. ...
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Civil procedure
Costs – Human rights – Demonstrations Rebecca Hall and Others v Mayor of London (on behalf of the Greater London Authority): CA (Civ Div) (Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, Master of the Rolls, Lady Justice Arden, Lord Justice Stanley Burton): ...
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Offaly clever
Which sportsman played World Cup football and test match cricket for his country? How many prime ministers have served under our present Queen? What is Inspector Morse’s first name? All, it seems, perfectly easy questions for the profession’s intellectual elite, who – along with Obiter – last week competed in ...
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Coal miners pursue law firms over ‘undersettled’ compensation
The first known court actions against law firms for alleged undersettlement of sick coal miners’ government compensation claims will begin preliminary hearings in mid-August, the Gazette has learned. A number of defendant firms have already settled out of court. Oldham County Court is due to hold ...