All Law Gazette articles in Archive – Page 1396
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News
Should judges encroach upon the political arena?
‘Traditionally judges have kept their mouths shut and not entered the arena of the administration of justice or policy matters,’ noted Mr Justice Coleridge in his candid, compelling and at times caustic speech to the Association of Lawyers for Children.
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Audit training
A law degree (or CPD) plus Legal Practice Course is insufficient preparation for practice, and so there has to be an element of practical training. At the moment there is little quality control of training contracts; if you can last the two years, then you are in. ...
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News
Mexican lawyers honoured with human rights award
Two Mexican lawyers have won a prestigious human rights award for obtaining a landmark judgment recognising a new type of gender-based violence known as ‘femicide’. David Peña Rodriguez and Karla Micheel Salas Ramirez received the award from the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe ...
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Moses backs jury questions in criminal trials
Judges should present a list of questions to jurors in criminal trials to guide them in reaching a verdict, a senior judge suggested last week. Lord Justice Moses said the move, which was recommended in Lord Justice Auld’s 2001 review of the criminal courts, would reduce ...
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ProcureCos give bar 'whip hand'
The ProcureCo model for contracting for legal aid work will for the first time give the bar the ‘whip hand’ over solicitors, justice minister Jonathan Djanogly said last week. The minister also disclosed that he has ruled out imposing a levy on the financial services ...
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Called to the bar
The Ministry of Justice’s consultation on court closures – sorry, modernising and improving the courts – closed in September, but Obiter nonetheless hopes that his honour Anthony Bradbury’s book, Early London County Courts, is on the justice ministers’ Christmas reading lists. The ministers, Obiter knows, like to think outside the ...
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'Mixed practice' warning for publicly funded barristers
Incoming Bar Council chairman Peter Lodder QC today warned publicly funded barristers to diversify or face a bleak future. Legal aid rate cuts have been ‘too numerous and too deep’ for young barristers to survive on that single source of income, he told Bar ...
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The inspiration behind the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law
by Professor Jeffrey Jowell QC, the inaugural director of the Bingham Centre The Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law will be formally launched at the Royal Courts of Justice on 6 December. Supreme Court president Lord Phillips will preside over a meeting addressed by ...
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The benefits of the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme
The last 12 months have been very difficult for conveyancers. They have faced low volumes of transactions caused by ‘mortgage famine’, and consumer anxiety about the economy generally. This has been exacerbated by estate agents’ increasingly aggressive attitude towards referral fees.
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EU bill set to confirm UK sovereignty
The government’s EU bill will ‘place beyond doubt’ the principle of parliamentary sovereignty over EU law, minister for Europe David Lidington said last week. He told the UK Association of European Lawyers that the bill will put on a ‘statutory footing’ the principle that EU law ...
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Feature
BOOK REVIEW Cases that Changed our Lives
Author: Ian McDougall (general editor) Ian McDougall’s excellent new anthology shows how the common law in many jurisdictions continues to have a profound effect on society, with the decisions of judges in contentious cases vying, not always comfortably, with ...
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Which PEST is bothering your firm?
It will be 2011 in a few weeks and whenever your year-end is, planning for the coming year raises some interesting questions. What factors will affect the business planning for your firm? Here’s a standard business analysis tool that seems very relevant to solicitors firms since there seems to be ...
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Building quality
As chairman of the Conveyancing Association, I am writing to lend the support of our body to the Law Society Conveyancing Quality Scheme. Members of the association, which include a significant proportion of large conveyancers, fully support and endorse all efforts to improve the legal process of conveyancing. ...
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News
Bunga-Bunga
Delegates at Inner Temple last week must have been wondering what they had let themselves in for when Lord Justice Moses began the annual law reform lecture.
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Green pioneers slash carbon footprints
Almost 40% of law firms in the Legal Sector Alliance (LSA) have cut their carbon footprints in the last year, according to the alliance’s annual report, released today. In 2010, the average amount of carbon generated per LSA member employee varied between 0.48 and 8.94 tonnes, ...
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Chancery Lane to intervene in CFA case
The Law Society has been given permission to intervene in a Court of Appeal case on civil litigation funding which it claims could ensure access to justice for many clients in the wake of the government’s proposed legal aid cuts. The case concerns a challenge by ...
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News
How the property market is changing as law firms weigh up office space
There is a strong sense that the property market is changing in important ways for law firms of all sizes as occupiers.
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Civil procedure
Discrimination – Equality and Human Rights Commission – Lay assessors S Deman v Commission for Equality and Human Rights and others: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justices Sedley, Moses): 6 November 2010 ...
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Insurers seek to pursue solicitors over whiplash fraud claims
The insurance industry is seeking to pursue solicitors whom it believes are involved in fraudulent whiplash claims, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has said. James Dalton, ABI assistant director of motor and liability, told delegates at the Motor Accident Solicitors Society annual conference last ...
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Clients keep legal spending in-house
Commercial firms are competing in a static market as large clients grow their in-house legal teams rather than turn to external firms to deal with an increasing workload, research seen exclusively by the Gazette has indicated. An annual benchmarking survey of 124 heads of legal ...