All Law Gazette articles in Archive – Page 1545
-
News
Something stinks
So as far as I can make out we, a solicitor’s firm, must now go cap in hand to a licensed conveyancer firm if we want to appeal to get on to the panel of a high street bank. And that licensed conveyancer firm, which is on the panel of ...
-
News
CFA does not justify departure on interest rate, Neuberger rules
Interest on costs should run from the date of an order rather than the point where costs are agreed, the master of the rolls, Lord Neuberger, has ruled. In a landmark judgment in Simcoe v Jacuzzi Group UK, Neuberger yesterday held that interest on the costs runs from the date ...
-
News
Look out for a clampdown on costs
It’s fair to say that most litigators prefer to spend their time on the cut and thrust of litigation rather than compiling detailed calculations of what they expect their final bill to be.
-
News
ABS aspirant Express announces £3m expansion
Manchester-based personal injury firm Express Solicitors has announced £3m expansion plans and the creation of 40 new jobs in a bid to become an alternative business structure with a £10m turnover within four years. Over the next year, the 12-year-old firm plans to move to a ...
-
News
Do reserved activities harm the UK economy?
This week, from the same people who brought you economic ruin, we have more of the same. As I have said before, deregulation and liberalisation - those twin modern marvels which most agree to have been the motors of our current economic crisis - are still fixed in our rulers’ ...
-
News
Litigation changes ‘border on recklessness’, says APIL chief
Rapid change in civil litigation threatens to ‘besiege’ claimant solicitors and their clients, according to the outgoing president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL). David Bott, speaking at the APIL president’s lunch last week, accused the government of ‘recklessness’ in pushing ahead too quickly ...
-
News
DLA’s fixed-price venture chases commercial market
A fixed-price legal services provider today became the first new entrant of the alternative business structure era to enter the commercial market. Riverview Law, backed with funding from global firm DLA Piper, aims to attract every type of client from small and medium-sized businesses to large corporations.
-
News
ABS revolution in view
Tesco Law was never supposed to be like this. We expected a flood of new entrants to a high street near you, laden with private equity cash and ideas of grandeur, many backed by existing big-name brands. Alternative business structures were going to sweep up the mass market of personal ...
-
News
Ombudsman confirms move into claims management
Plans for the Legal Ombudsman to handle complaints about claims management companies will benefit consumers and the legal profession, according to the chief ombudsman. Proposals to bring complaints about claims management into the scheme’s remit were confirmed at this week’s meeting of the Office for Legal ...
-
News
HSBC accused of blocking panel appeal
The Law Society has accused HSBC and its conveyancing panel manager Countrywide of 'unreasonable' behaviour over membership of the bank's conveyancing panel. According to a statement, the Society had been told by the bank and Countrywide that an appeal process was in place for firms who ...
-
News
Ruling takes foreign lawyers further on passage to India
India’s much-vaunted ‘road map’ for the liberalisation of its £2.6bn legal services market has inched closer to reality following a high court ruling in a case concerning magic circle and international firms. In a ruling yesterday, the Chennai high court gave foreign firms the right to ...
-
News
Freshfields’ £10k bursary for underprivileged students
A magic circle firm is to offer students from less privileged backgrounds an annual bursary of £10,000 to finance their law degree studies. The scheme, which follows coalition social mobility adviser Alan Milburn’s calls for higher education to take greater account of candidates’ social backgrounds, will ...
-
News
Over 50 law firms join breast implant action
A group action on behalf of the estimated 40,000 UK women who received cosmetic breast implants made by a now-defunct French company has signed up more than 50 law firms, in what could be the final group action of its kind. One of the lawyers ...
-
News
Looking again at the rules
It is embarrassing how far, despite all your efforts to suppress them, your teenage obsessions come back to haunt you. Not a problem if your adolescent self showed any semblance of cool. But nerdy classicist is not exactly the image I want to cultivate.
-
News
Time to get along
Obiter approached the APIL president's lunch with the trepidation of Back to the Future's Doc Brown fearing Marty McFly would meet his future self. Surely the universe would implode if the invited guests - including APIL and its nemeses, FOIL and the ABI ...
-
News
Sometimes we need Europe-wide answers
This is a report from the European frontline. I read the same newspapers as you do and see the hysterical coverage about imminent EU collapse. But I also work in a European organisation - the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) - where we have members from ...
-
News
APIL ‘defeatist’
The rights of innocent victims have had shockingly little bearing on the shape of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which has been driven by a mythical compensation culture as part of a surreptitious government cost-cutting agenda. Sadly, those same victims appear to have been given equally ...
-
News
Politicians appreciate the value of investigative journalism
What future does investigative journalism have in an age when reporters face arrest and courts develop privacy laws? That was the question raised in a report published last week by the House of Lords communications committee. The select committee’s starting point was that ‘responsible investigative journalism ...
-
News
Government backs single EU patent court
The government has backed controversial plans to set up a single patent court for Europe. Lady Wilcox, minister at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, told a Lords committee this week that, even after 40 years of failed negotiations, the way forward for business efficiency in Europe remains a ...
-
News
Beaver diva
Obiter understands why readers who work in criminal justice might be distracted by the Ministry of Justice’s attempts, to put it kindly, to fillet their livelihoods. But as you occasionally lift your eyes from rejected LSC forms, don’t you wonder what the few ...