All Law Gazette articles in Archive – Page 1447

  • News

    BLG announces profits boost

    2011-05-17T00:00:00Z

    City firm Barlow Lyde & Gilbert (BLG) has this week announced significant end-of-year profits. The firm recorded a 17% increase in turnover for 2010/11, and saw profits rise by 35% across the board. That figure took into account performance in both the ...

  • News

    No win no fee agreements are blamed for rise in medical negligence claims

    2011-05-18T00:00:00Z

    No win no fee agreements have been blamed for a sharp rise in the number of medical negligence claims. The Medical Defence Union says claims increased by almost 20% in 2010 after several years of stable figures. More than half of the ...

  • News

    Chancery Lane seeks ‘pause’ to reforms of legal aid

    2011-05-18T00:00:00Z

    The president of the Law Society has written to justice secretary Ken Clarke calling for a pause in the proposed legal aid reforms. Linda Lee said the proposals ‘amount to a fundamental reshaping of the legal aid scheme’, removing from scope many areas of law that ...

  • News

    Law Society launches Excellence Awards

    2011-05-18T00:00:00Z

    The Gazette will shortly be seeking a Legal Personality of the Year as one of this year’s Law Society Excellence Awards. For the second year running, we will be inviting readers to nominate lawyers who over the previous 12 months have made an outstanding contribution to ...

  • News

    burden

    2011-05-18T00:00:00Z

    Families who have lost loved ones through murder or manslaughter are facing heavy financial burdens as they try to pick up the pieces, research has shown. Bereaved families have to deal with average costs of £37,000, according to a study by Louise Casey, commissioner for victims ...

  • News

    Sack Clarke? Be careful what you wish for Ed…

    2011-05-18T00:00:00Z

    Dark clouds fill the sky over the Ministry of Justice, with Ken Clarke getting rained on from a great height. And to a large extent, he fully deserves his soaking. Even appearing to distinguish between ‘date rape’ and ‘serious rape’ (he ...

  • News

    Clarke mulls privacy law

    2011-05-18T00:00:00Z

    Ministers, newspaper editors and celebrities will turn their attentions to the Royal Courts of Justice later this week for a landmark development on injunctions. On Friday Lord Neuberger (pictured), master of the rolls, will issue a report on the use of injunctions by a committee of ...

  • News

    Is government living up to the military covenant?

    2011-05-18T00:00:00Z

    The notion of the military covenant, that members of the military and their family are owed fair treatment and proper support, in return for risking their lives at the discretion of policy-makers, is sound and accepted. Feelings run understandably high when anyone claims that the ...

  • News

    Welcome to the family

    2011-05-18T00:00:00Z

    History is certainly not bunk as far as traditionalist Obiter is concerned. So we offer our apologies to Peter Williamson for muddling our dates when we wrote last week that he was sitting Law Society president when his daughter Catherine was admitted in 2005. ...

  • News

    Could Mary Portas help your law firm?

    2011-05-18T00:00:00Z

    Imagine if your law firm was put to the test by a secret shopper – someone like TV celebrity guru Mary Portas, otherwise known as Mary Queen of Shops. How would it fare? After a high powered career in retailing, Portas forged ...

  • News

    Immigration lawyers warn of reforms impact

    2011-05-18T00:00:00Z

    Limits on the number of professional migrants allowed into the UK are ‘politically-driven’ and risk stalling economic recovery and driving business overseas, speakers at an Alliance of Business Immigration Lawyers conference in London warned earlier this month. Delegates heard that the UK was ‘bucking the trend’ ...

  • News

    Sterling efforts at legal walks raised more than £500,000

    2011-05-19T00:00:00Z

    One must grudgingly admire legal aid minister Jonathan Djanogly’s chutzpah in turning up to this week’s record-breaking London Legal sponsored walk. For its spectacular success will hopefully go some small way to compensating for the deep cuts to funding for social welfare law that his ...

  • News

    City lawyer sacked after claiming '£1m' expenses

    2011-05-19T00:00:00Z

    A City lawyer specialising in fraud cases has been dismissed after ‘wrongly’ claiming more than £1m in expenses from his firm. Christopher Grierson was removed from the partnership at Hogan Lovells after the firm concluded an investigation. Lovells said Grierson, who qualified ...

  • News

    CPS under fire over advocate panels

    2011-05-19T00:00:00Z

    The Crown Prosecution Service faced pressure from both its own inspectorate and the Bar Council this week over its procurement of external advocates. The Gazette has learned that the Bar Council is seeking advice on a judicial review of the CPS’s new advocate panels. ...

  • News

    Stress among solicitors remains ‘high'

    2011-05-19T00:00:00Z

    High numbers of solicitors are seeking help with depression and alcohol addiction problems, according to the latest figures from charity LawCare. The charity’s 2010 annual report, to be published later this year, shows that stress is still by far the biggest problem faced by callers to ...

  • News

    Court of Appeal in landmark compensation ruling

    2011-05-19T00:00:00Z

    The Court of Appeal has overturned an Employment Tribunal’s decision to award a dismissed worker career-long compensation. Lord Justice Elias last week ruled that the tribunal had erred in awarding almost £375,000 to banker Michael Wardle in Wardle v Calyon. Wardle ...

  • News

    Harrow Law Centre's community approach is the 'model to follow'

    2011-05-19T00:00:00Z

    The multi-funded community approach adopted by the newly launched Harrow Law Centre is the ‘model to follow’ for the voluntary sector, according to the centre’s chair Pamela Fitzpatrick. Lord Justice Mummery opened the centre, which provides advice on social welfare law, public law, community care, housing, ...

  • News

    Pro bono approval

    2011-05-19T00:00:00Z

    On 12 May Jonathan Rayner reported on the ‘outcry’ that has arisen because in-house lawyers might be prevented from working pro bono. In addressing this issue, two principles should be kept in balance:

  • News

    European Arrest Warrants are 'misused', says FTI

    2011-05-19T00:00:00Z

    Mismanagement of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) has led to a ‘no questions asked’ extradition regime with severe human and financial costs to those charged with minor offences, according to a report by Fair Trials International (FTI).

  • News

    Insurers attack high volume of whiplash claims

    2011-05-19T00:00:00Z

    Insurers have decried the UK as the whiplash capital of Europe with nearly 1,200 claims made every day.