All Law Gazette articles in Archive – Page 1460
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News
Lawyers ‘not trusted’ by majority, says consumer watchdog
Under half of the general public trust lawyers, according to the results of a survey commissioned by consumer watchdog the Legal Services Consumer Panel. Published today, the research reveals that only 47% of people in England and Wales trust lawyers to tell the truth. That figure ...
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News
Victims of crime failed by criminal justice system
Members of the public have little confidence in the criminal justice system and feel the rights of the accused outweigh their own, a new survey suggests. National charity Victim Support reveals the extent of discontent with the system among recent victims of crime in its latest ...
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News
Clarke rules out raid on client account interest
In a small victory for the Law Society, the government has dropped plans to use the interest from firms’ client accounts to bolster the legal aid budget. In its response to the green paper consultation, published after yesterday’s publication of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment ...
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News
Djanogly urged to ease legal aid backlog
The president of the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association has written to justice minister Jonathan Djanogly (pictured) asking him to ‘directly assist’ in tackling the ‘appalling delay’ in legal aid applications and payments. Since the Legal Services Commission (LSC) centralized the administration of legal aid forms ...
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News
PCS strikers aim to close Supreme Court
The courts will rely on their depleted ranks of senior managers to remain open during industrial action, when Ministry of Justice members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) strike on 30 June in protest at proposed changes to public sector pensions and job cuts. ...
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News
Beachcroft in merger talks with Davies Arnold Cooper
Beachcroft and Davies Arnold Cooper are discussing a potential merger that would catapult the combined firm into the UK’s top 25 by revenue. The pair said today that together they aim to create one of the largest law firms serving the insurance market, both nationally and ...
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News
Elite blames SRA for decision not to enter indemnity market
A leading insurer has said that the SRA’s failure to implement reform more quickly has deterred it from entering the solicitors’ professional indemnity market. Elite Insurance said it will not join the market this year despite initial suggestions it would be writing premiums. ...
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Feature
BOOK REVIEW Whose Criminal Justice? State or Community?
Author: Katherine Doolin, John Child, John Raine and Anthony Beech Crime is a political football and always has been; each government wants to be seen to be tougher on criminals and yet also cut the prison population. ...
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News
Huge debt burden would have deterred most of today’s lawyers from university
A new survey of qualified lawyers has found that under half would have gone to university today, when aspiring solicitors can expect to wrack up massive debts. Legal recruitment firm Laurence Simons found the majority of 224 respondents would have baulked at the total costs of ...
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News
Chancery Lane urges government to fund family justice reforms
The Law Society has backed the Family Justice Review’s ‘far-reaching’ proposals for reform, but urged the government not to proceed with the changes unless it can provide the money to implement them properly. Responding to the consultation on the Interim Report of the review panel, which ...
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News
Law Society winds up final salary pension scheme
The Law Society is to wind up its deficit-stricken final salary pension scheme, a move that chief executive Desmond Hudson expects to save the organisation £12.5m a year from 2012. Agreement has been reached with global retirement and savings specialist MetLife for a buy-out of ...
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News
Part 36 offers and recent judgments
One of the most successful innovations introduced by the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) has been part 36 offers. In 2007, part 36 offers replaced payments into court as the sole mechanism under the CPR for making offers to settle, which, in the words of Lord Justice Moore-Bick, have ‘far-reaching consequences ...
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News
Government set to press ahead with legal aid cuts and Jackson reforms
The Law Society and legal profession this week vowed to continue campaigning against the government’s legal aid cuts, following publication of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill by justice secretary Kenneth Clarke. The bill, issued as the Gazette went to press, confirmed the ...
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News
Whitehall turns a blind eye to fallout from legal aid cuts
It is a common cry, when a decision goes against someone, that there was a flaw in consultation. But the objections to what is proposed for the withdrawal of legal aid in the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill are more substantive than the lamentations of sore losers.
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News
Animal instinct and the law
I read the letters page weekly and normally find the tone of the correspondence quite depressing. I was therefore delighted to read the item ‘Become a vet’ which made me laugh out loud in my office. Not that I wish to seem joyful at ...
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News
Arbitration
Award – Appeal – Defendant employed by claimant Wilson & Partners Ltd v Emmott: QBD (Comm) Mr Justice Andrew Smith: 8 June 2011 The claimant company was incorporated in the ...
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News
It makes sense to restrict arrests for crimes of universal jurisdiction
Government reforms designed to restrict arrests for crimes of universal jurisdiction survived new challenges in the House of Lords last week. If the proposals emerge unscathed after a further debate this month, there will be less risk that politicians visiting Britain from countries such as the US, China and Israel ...
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News
Irani scoops JLD pro bono award
Shireen Irani won the first LawWorks Junior Lawyers Division pro bono award at the LawWorks annual awards ceremony last night. She won the award for developing i-pro bono, an independent not-for-profit organisation connecting bodies in need of legal assistance with lawyers and students who want to ...
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News
‘Big is not beautiful’ says LSB in report on smaller regulators
An independent report commissioned by the Legal Services Board into the future of the smaller regulators has stressed that they must not be forced into radical changes in response to the Legal Services Act. The report, by former Ministry of Justice official Nick Smedley, predicted there ...
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News
Defective claims
I read with interest the variousletters pointing out that a claim form is a ‘statement of case’ and must be verified by a statement of truth. The standard claim form, N1, has the following statement of truth at the bottom of the second page: ‘(I believe) ...