All articles by Eduardo Reyes – Page 33
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News
China arbitration fight rocks foreign firms
Fears are growing that arbitration decisions made in two of China’s economic powerhouses may be impossible to enforce as a result of a feud between rival arbitration centres. The dispute began with the release of new arbitration rules by the Beijing-based China International Economic and ...
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News
Let it snow
How well did your firm or department cope with the snow? (Or how well are you coping? I realise it’s still very much there for some of you.) That’s not just a polite enquiry – though of course I do care – but I actually think ...
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News
Roundtable: market makers
A difficult economy combined with far-reaching changes in legal regulation has given the UK’s dominant legal market, England and Wales, the feel of a dramatic landscape heading into 2013. Commentators have taken to reaching for an impressive range of cliches and metaphors – from ‘perfect storm’ to ‘brave new world’, ...
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News
Does competition law suit the NHS?
Competition law seems especially vulnerable to ‘the law of unintended consequences’ in the current environment. This can be seen in operation, some argue, by the 8 January referral by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) of a proposed merger between two NHS trusts (located in Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch) to ...
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News
What connects us: can the answer be human rights?
A rising tide of prosperity that floats all boats is no longer the glue that can hold our society together. Whatever the consensus was in the boom years around the greater good that could be derived from economic growth driven by personal atavism, to make the same argument at the ...
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News
Bill of rights commission splits
The prime minister’s plans for a ‘British bill of rights’ are in tatters today as the commission he formed to tackle the issue publishes its final report with two commission members dissenting from its contents. Lady Kennedy (Helena Kennedy QC) and Philippe Sands QC have written a dissenting argument. Speaking ...
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News
Can accountants change the legal sector?
The re-entry of the global accounting firms into the legal sector is one of the more eye-catching predictions in professor Richard Susskind’s latest book, published today, ‘Tomorrow’s Lawyers: an introduction to your future’.
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News
Dishonesty in debates on tax law
Despite Starbucks’ announcement that it intends to start paying corporation tax in the UK, I’m finding the current debate on tax law frustrating. There is a lack of honesty on all sides. The debate as presented at the moment is a triangle. In one corner, ...
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News
UKBA warns lawyers over ‘queue-jumping’
Immigration lawyers who help clients queue-jump an appointments system for work permits risk sanctions that could end their practice, the UK Border Agency has warned. In what is known as ‘a 3am appointment’, immigration advisers, including solicitors, use fictitious client names to book appointments online ...
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News
Lawyers fight town hall cuts
A group of City pro bono lawyers is taking aim at local authority cuts affecting vulnerable elderly and disabled residents. The lawyers will scrutinise care fee contracts that councils seek to vary, and bring judicial reviews of cuts estimated to add up to £1bn. ...
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News
Merger threat to Whitehall lawyers
Government lawyers fear cost-cutting consolidation plans will lead to big job losses and attacks on their employment conditions. The merger of legal functions appears set to incorporate cuts deeper than envisaged in the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review. Correspondence seen by the ...
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Profile
Interview: Lord McNally
At a press conference following David Cameron’s only major government reshuffle, justice minister Lord McNally reflected that he might owe his position as sole surviving minister in the Ministry of Justice more to his status as a Liberal Democrat than other factors.
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News
What government legal service mergers mean
Should the merger of government legal functions – the so-called ‘shared services’ model – be of concern to the lawyers affected? It isn’t scare-mongering to say that for many it should, even though the immediate effect may be minimal. The shared services programme is separate ...
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News
How To: use social media
The normally sure-footed John Lewis Partnership demonstrated the risks of ‘engaging’ with shoppers through Twitter in September, when its upmarket grocer, Waitrose, urged people to complete the Tweet: ‘I shop at Waitrose because...’. What came back in this open forum was not the anticipated free endorsement of its products by ...
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News
Kent firm Cripps brings in property expert
Expertise from the property industry is to guide expansion at Kent firm Cripps Harries Hall, the latest law firm to announce the appointment of a high-profile non-executive consultant. Christopher Digby-Bell (pictured), a director and general counsel at property investment business Palmer Capital, has been appointed ...
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News
Scot-free banking
‘Unbelievable!!!’ was the striking line in an email I received earlier this week from a trusted contact. It referenced a reported request by John Cridland, director general of the Confederation of British Industry, for banks to be protected from lawsuits related to the sale of products linked to Libor. ‘It ...
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News
PII warning over unrated insurers
Cash-strapped law firms have been driven to obtaining professional indemnity insurance from unrated insurers this year, risking regulatory sanctions where an insurer becomes insolvent, a leading broker and the Law Society have warned. Unrated firms, listed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, are those without a ...
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Profile
Interview: Stephen Denyer
It is not unusual to plan for the future, or to ask questions about how key changes might affect a business’s prospects. But few, if any, law firms do so as publicly as the £1.9bn-turnover global elite firm Allen & Overy. The results of the firm’s collective reflections – on ...
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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
Human trafficking victims failed by defence teams, CCRC alleges
Many victims of human trafficking are being failed by defence teams, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) warned this week. All have ignored clear law in numerous prosecutions, it alleges. The commission says there are numerous cases where inadequate ...