All Law Gazette articles in Archive – Page 1638
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News
Bar broadside on referral fees ‘confused and self-serving’
The Law Society today rebutted bar claims that solicitors are putting pressure on barristers to enter referral fee arrangements that damage the interests of clients. Chancery Lane accused the Bar Council of ‘confusing the public interest with barristers’ interests’ in new advice to the bar which ...
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News
Justice on the cheap
The act of stripping out costs and processes occupies a huge acreage of business theory, and was a mainstream preoccupation for senior management even in better economic times. Policymakers, thinktank researchers and civil service fast-streamers all have ‘magpie’ tendencies, and staring at tight and vanishing budgets, one can see why ...
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News
Bar needs to rethink on referral fees
Referral fees don’t go away. I’ll probably be writing later about the latest SRA consultation, but my immediate attention’s been caught by the latest guidance on the subject from the Bar Council’s Professional Practices Committee (PPC).
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News
Leniency for legal whistleblowers
Whistleblowers involved in misconduct will face more lenient penalties under proposals being considered by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The regulator today launched a consultation on the introduction of co-operation agreements, under which solicitors who may have been involved in misconduct or failed to report it, but ...
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News
London care pilot to make £1m saving
A pilot to speed up care cases has more than halved the time taken to resolve matters and is on track to save the public purse £1m a year. In April, three London boroughs – Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham – began ...
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News
Lyons Davidson looks to capitalise on ABS status
Lyons Davidson has been granted alternative business structure (ABS) status, which the national firm hopes will help it capitalise on changes in the UK legal market. Managing director Mark Savill told the Gazette that the move is key to its strategic relationship with insurers in preparation ...
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News
Civil litigators could consider advocacy
by Rachel Rothwell, editor of Litigation Funding magazine I recently attended a conference held by the Law Society’s Civil Justice Section – Litigators: survive and thrive. One key message was aimed at personal injury lawyers who – with the Jackson timebomb ticking and set for detonation ...
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News
Aftermath of panel reviews
It is said that there are more questions on the application form to be a member of a lender’s conveyancing panel than there are to join MI5. Whether or not that is true, it is clear that if you want to do a good job for your homebuying clients, and ...
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News
Low legal aid fee ‘scandalous’
Karen Todner is right to be concerned for the future of publicly funded criminal defence firms. My firm recently represented a 13-year-old boy arrested on suspicion of murder. A qualified solicitor spent nine hours and 42 minutes on a Friday evening and Saturday advising him, with ...
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News
Where there is another will
Looking again at Colonel Wintle’s problems over the will drawn by solicitor Nye (30 August), I thought of one from the end of the 19th century when one of the more outrageous frauds was attempted by a Liverpool solicitor, John Hollis Yates. It concerned the estate of Helen Blake, née ...
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Feature
BOOK REVIEW The Art of the Loophole: Making the Law Work For You
Author: Nick Frreeman Nick ‘Mr Loophole’ Freeman has attracted a lot of attention. Getting rich people off serious traffic matters has made him famous. He is a lawyer who most commonly appears in the press and other media. He ...
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News
How to avoid a court crash
All practitioners in family law will recognise the scene: it is 9.45am and already the small waiting room in the county court is heaving with barristers, solicitors and parties to the proceedings. Often the morning session blurs into the afternoon and ‘justice’ is not swift. What ...
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News
Dragon is bang on the money
When I was a newspaper City hack I always considered private equity to be the reductive apotheosis of late-capitalism (sounds pretentious, but bear with me). I still do. Private equity firms don’t provide any service; they are pretty much invisible; and their owners do their ...
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Feature
BOOK REVIEW The Protest Handbook
Author: Tom Wainwright, Anna Morris, Katherine Craig and Owen Greenhall As unprecedented numbers take to the streets to engage in increasingly creative peaceful protest, we bear witness to rising instances of police hindering effective protest, often unlawfully. Having an ...
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News
Divorce ruling branded ‘cheat’s charter’
Lawyers have branded as a ‘cheat’s charter’ a Court of Appeal landmark ruling that an oil tycoon need not hand over to his wife £17.5m in assets held by his companies. In Petrodel Resources Ltd & Ors v Prest & Ors [2012] EWCA Civ 1395 the ...
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News
Human endeavour subject to the principles of commerce
Soon there will be fruit machines in the lobby of every courtroom in England and Wales. Three cherries wins you a paralegal; three pineapples a senior partner. Pull the handle and take your chance.
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News
Commercial property
The report of E.ON UK plc v Gilesports Limited [2012] EWHC 2172 bears reading because there are a number of interesting points, but in this article I will focus on only one – how long is a reasonable time to consent to an assignment?
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News
Competing with new entrants
The legal market in the UK has been in a state of radical evolution for some time. In these uncertain times, solicitors, particularly those in established local law firms, have the opportunity to compete with the large new entrants and other competitors around them on the level playing field of ...
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News
SRA ‘confident’ over PC renewals
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has expressed ‘confidence’ that this year’s practising certificate renewal season, which began today, will pass more smoothly than last year’s troubled process. 2011 was the first year that the SRA attempted online renewal and payments, through its mySRA portal. Well-publicised difficulties with ...
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News
Information demands lay siege to confidentiality
Futurologists of the legal profession concentrate chiefly on the impact of technology and alternative structures when predicting what will happen next. There is an assumption that the activities of lawyers will continue as before, but delivered in a new way. However, I want to describe another trend which is beginning ...