All articles by Catherine Baksi – Page 52
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News
PM's adoption reform prompts warning
Lawyers have welcomed the prime minister’s proposal for legislation to speed up the adoption process, but warned that changes could lead to increased legal challenges. An action plan due to be launched yesterday will require local authorities to find adoptive parents within three months, or to place children on the ...
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Deech confident about QASA roll-out
The controversial accreditation scheme for advocates has the support of judges and will go ahead, the chair of the Bar Standards Board has said amid a continuing dispute with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
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MPs’ caseloads will bear the brunt of legal aid cuts
MPs will face a ‘rising tide of need’ from constituents with unmet legal needs if the government’s legal aid cuts are implemented, according to a report published today by the Young Legal Aid Lawyers (YLAL) group. The study warns that increasing numbers of people are turning ...
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Law Society slams barristers’ public access plan
Proposals to allow barristers with less than three years' experience to accept work directly from the public without supervision are ‘an abdication of regulatory risk,’ according to the Law Society. Responding to a Bar Standards Board (BSB) consultation on relaxing the public access rules, Chancery Lane called for ‘clear and ...
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Government blocks bid for immigration and debt amendments to LASPO
Opponents of the government’s legal aid reforms suffered defeats in two votes last night as peers continued to debate the controversial Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) bill. In the third sitting of the bill’s report stage, the government defeated amendments that would have ...
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CPS monitor warns of advocacy gap
The Crown Prosecution Service has saved £26m over the past five years by increasing its use of in-house advocates - but done little to improve those advocates’ quality, the CPS inspectorate reports today. In a follow up to its 2009 report on the CPS’s advocacy strategy, ...
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LASPO suffers three more defeats in Lords
The government lost three more votes on its planned legal aid reforms in the House of Lords yesterday, but narrowly staved off an amendment that would have kept public funding for all clinical negligence cases. In the second day of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment ...
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Court upholds wasted costs order
The Court of Appeal has upheld a wasted costs order against a Buckinghamshire firm, ruling that it was ‘complicit’ in its client’s ‘manipulation’ of the court process by failing to give reasons for opposing a hearsay notice in a criminal trial.
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Quality test 'should not protect barristers'
Controversy about the use of judicial evaluation in a new scheme to assess the quality of advocates has escalated, with solicitors’ bodies warning that the scheme could become a means to protect barristers.
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ALS offers cash to beat interpreting boycott
The company running the controversial new courtroom interpreting service is offering cash incentives to interpreters who recruit friends, the Gazette has learned, as it emerged than nine out of 10 court interpreters are boycotting the service.
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Reprieve for specialist support service
The Specialist Support Provider Service (SSPS) has received a stay of execution after the Legal Services Commission agreed to extend current contracts for three months while it consults on ending the scheme.
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Clarke: ‘We’re taking legal aid away from lawyers’
The government’s legal aid cuts are aimed at lawyers, the justice secretary Kenneth Clarke said today, as he rejected the Law Society’s claims that they will harm access to justice for the disadvantaged. Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Clarke said: ‘We’re not taking legal aid ...
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Opponents score hat-trick on legal aid votes
The government lost all three votes in the Lords last night over proposed amendments to its legal aid bill, making concessions on the evidence needed to prove domestic violence and on powers to bring cases back into the scope of legal aid. In a series of ...
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Committal fee cut ‘leaves defendants unrepresented’
Defendants are being left unrepresented in magistrates’ courts following the government’s scrapping of lawyers’ fees for committal proceedings in either-way offences, the Law Society told the High Court this week. Lord Justice Burnton and Mr Justice Treacy heard the Society’s legal challenge to the lawfulness of ...
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Court clerk turns to Google to fill interpreting gap
A court has resorted to web translation to communicate with a defendant as the fiasco over the government’s new interpreting regime continues to disrupt hearings.
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Judicial evaluation key to quality assurance, SRA says
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has confirmed that it regards judicial evaluation as a ‘central feature’ of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates. However, chief executive Antony Townsend warned today that quality assurance ‘should not be used as a device to exclude the demonstrably competent simply because their pattern of practice ...
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News
Conveyancing forms update plan
The Law Society is seeking views on revising its general enquiry forms for residential conveyancing. It aims to update the property information form TA6 and the fittings and contents form TA10, which are filled in by sellers. Jonathan Smithers, chair of the Society’s land ...
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LASPO concessions a ‘smokescreen’, says Labour
The shadow justice secretary has dismissed the government’s partial U-turns on domestic violence and clinical negligence as a ‘smokescreen’ to avert losing votes on the reforms in the House of Lords. The government announced yesterday that it had tabled amendments to the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill ...
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News
BSB code hints at OFR
The Bar Standards Board has outlined a move towards solicitor firm-style outcomes-focused regulation, in a consultation which also proposes the immediate suspension of some barristers facing disciplinary action. In papers published this week, the BSB sets out its aim to introduce a single handbook of rules, ...
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Government announces legal aid concessions
The government has made two key concessions demanded by opponents of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill, days before the legislation enters report stage in the House of Lords. In amendments tabled today, the government accepted that the broad definition of domestic violence ...