All Law Gazette articles in Archive – Page 1557
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News
Women’s criminal justice policy proposal fails
A proposal to establish a women’s criminal justice policy unit within the Ministry of Justice foundered yesterday after a vote on an amendment to the Legal Aid Sentencing and Criminal Justice Bill was tied. Peers voted evenly, with 217 votes for and 217 against, on an ...
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News
Sole practitioners 'unthreatened' by ABSs
Alternative business structures are more of an opportunity than a threat to sole practitioners, whose numbers are back to pre-recession levels, leaders in the sector have told the Gazette. Latest figures from the Solicitors Regulation Authority show there were 3,568 sole practitioners in February - ...
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News
MPs call for review of legal aid cuts
The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has added its voice to calls for an independent assessment of the impact of the government’s cuts to legal aid. In a hard-hitting report on Ministry of Justice finances, the committee said the government’s own impact assessment ‘has ...
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Civil court group anger over Salford system
A body whose membership spends around £49m a year in the civil courts has questioned why the new centralised facility to handle money claims in civil cases was launched earlier this week without its long-awaited payment by account (PbA) electronic system. The vice chair of the ...
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UK lawyers leading Camp Ashraf challenge
by Hossein Abedini, a member of parliament in exile of Iranian Resistance At a glance one might ask why UK lawyers are doing all they can to help 3,400 Iranian refugees in a camp based some 3,000 miles away in Iraq. The two groups are not ...
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Taking the biscuit
Anyone wondering whether those in government are hep to modern technology should be in no doubt after justice minister Lord McNally’s performance at a conference last week. Responding to a question on whether the forthcoming defamation bill would be compatible with the EU directive on ...
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News
Closing QS member blames Jackson
A two-partner member of the QualitySolicitors network has blamed its closure on the Jackson reforms and the ‘spectre’ of reduced fees for personal injury claims. QualitySolicitors Carters, which carried out personal injury and clinical negligence work, ceased trading at the end of February. The 10-year-old Peterborough ...
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Breaking the silence
It is perhaps ironic that a lecture by a judge on when it might be appropriate for judges to speak to reporters should have remained unnoticed by reporters until two weeks after it was delivered.
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News
Higher calling
Hitesh Keshvala of London firm Ally Lindsay has risen to the challenge of claiming to be the country’s youngest higher rights advocate. ‘My date of birth is 1/6/87 and I qualified with higher rights on 15 November 2011, making me a higher rights advocate at 24 years and 167 days.’ ...
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News
Claimant firms warned of wind of change
A leading insurance solicitor has urged claimant firms to follow the lead of defendants and change their business model. Anthony Hughes, chief executive of national firm Horwich Farrelly, told the 2012 Claims Management Conference yesterday that change is inevitable in the personal injury market. ...
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CPS commits to serving paper files
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has pledged to continue serving paper documents to defence solicitors amid concerns about its plan to go digital from April. However, the Law Society said this week that criminal solicitors will continue to face ‘financial and regulatory risks’ in preparing ...
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News
Many contributions offer fresh and original insights on the topics to hand
One of the more gratifying aspects of the development of the Gazette’s website in the last three years has been the democratisation of comment on our content. Some readers may still not be aware there are comment threads on news stories. Many contributions offer fresh and original insights on the ...
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News
HSE postpones cost recovery plan
The Health and Safety Executive has postponed the launch of its new cost recovery scheme for at least six months. The organisation planned to launch the Fee for Intervention scheme next month to recover costs from health and safety offenders. The money was to cover the ...
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News
Firms must cut staff, warns RBS
Law firms may have to cut thousands more solicitors to restore profits to pre-2008 levels, according to Royal Bank of Scotland’s 2012 review of the legal profession. The report says that at least 5% of fee-earners may have to be culled.
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Disclosure
Pre-trial or post-judgment relief - Disclosure of documents - Orders being made in phone-hacking case limiting disclosure of court documents Various Claimants v News Group Newspapers Ltd and another: ChD (Mr Justice Vos): 27 February 2012 ...
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News
ECHR withdrawal ‘gift to Putin’
Britain’s withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights in favour of a British bill of rights would be Vladimir Putin’s ‘best present ever’, an East European delegate at a Council of Europe event for lawyers told the Gazette last weekend.