All articles by Eduardo Reyes – Page 38
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News
Chancery Lane escalates legal aid fight
The Law Society is stepping up its campaign to block coalition reforms of legal aid and civil litigation funding which it says will leave the civil justice system ‘at the edge of an abyss’. The move comes as the House of Commons’ health committee warned this ...
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News focus: our analysis of the legal aid and sentencing bill
A close reading of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill has left many lawyers, campaign groups and politicians who support the legal aid system more worried than ever about future provision. Even though the government decided to rush to a second reading ...
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News
PCS strikers aim to close Supreme Court
The courts will rely on their depleted ranks of senior managers to remain open during industrial action, when Ministry of Justice members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) strike on 30 June in protest at proposed changes to public sector pensions and job cuts. ...
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Strikes likely after MoJ staff ballot
Strikes, a ban on overtime and a work-to-rule are likely to follow a ballot of Ministry of Justice staff who are members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS). Industrial action by PCS members, who work across most areas of MoJ activity, could result ...
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Extremism, universities and the law
This week home secretary Theresa May made headlines when she accused UK universities of ‘complacency’ on extremism. ‘I don't think they have been sufficiently willing to recognise what can be happening on their campuses and the radicalisation that can take place,’ May argued, as she ...
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A life less private
What do the former head of the IMF and an English footballer have in common? Well in the last fortnight, issues around what private information is in the public interest, and what is not, have swirled around both men. And ...
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Is government living up to the military covenant?
The notion of the military covenant, that members of the military and their family are owed fair treatment and proper support, in return for risking their lives at the discretion of policy-makers, is sound and accepted. Feelings run understandably high when anyone claims that the ...
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Stop cancelling one-to-one meetings with staff
Many managers in private practice and in in-house legal departments struggle with issues around staff morale. Morale’s a complex area. Staff can be intelligent and productive people, team players who are trusted by their colleagues and managers, working in a ...
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News focus: responses to the Jackson consultation on civil costs
The Ministry of Justice consultation on the implementation of Lord Justice Jackson’s (pictured) recommendations on reforming civil litigation and funding costs closed on 14 February. Six weeks later, we have the government’s response to the 600 submissions it received. They must be speed-readers at the MoJ. ...
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Balance of trade: lawyers shocked by breadth of government competition consultation
The coalition government’s consultation on the UK’s competition regime, published on 16 March, puts much more up for debate than competition lawyers, consumer bodies, or various business lobbies were expecting.
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News
Smaller firms preparing for ABS rivals
Most leaders of small law firms are considering changes to the way they manage their firm and the services they deliver, in preparation for the entry of new providers into the market from October, according to research seen exclusively by the Gazette. A survey of 58 ...
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News
Law firms will need to get better at collaboration
There are many indications that the legal economy will continue to face a difficult year, with many managing partners predicting stagnation or worse. The picture from general counsel and heads of legal confirms this picture – their budgets show no increase is planned, and that some of that spend will ...
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News
An assault on rights of children with special needs?
The consultation paper on changes to special educational needs and disability arrived with an alarming headline proposal yesterday: that statements of special educational need (SEN) would no longer be legally enforceable.
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News
War of the words: how the government controls the debate with new legal lexicon
Ministers in the coalition government don’t talk about ‘fat cat lawyers’. This may be because policy-makers are moving on from an unhelpful cliche as they prepare to cut legal aid, or it could be because any focus on high rewards turns the public’s ...
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News
UK borders ‘less secure’, say Home Office immigration staff
UK immigration staff charged with policing the nation’s borders believe that borders have become less secure as a result of government changes to immigration law, Home Office research has indicated. A study ...
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File blunders spark Legal Services Commission payment chaos
The Legal Services Commission is experiencing ‘significant delays’ in processing payments to firms after administrative blunders affected thousands of criminal case files, the Gazette has learned. Payment problems have occurred in relation to 4,000 files which were not allocated the necessary reference by HM Courts Service ...
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News
How a lawyer can change their specialist practice area
It is a common observation among middle-aged lawyers that the increasing need to specialise very early in a legal career has changed the face of the profession. Time spent in a more general or rounded practice has been much reduced, leading to a situation where lawyers are making key decisions ...
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News
The campaign against proposed legal aid cuts gains public support
Last week’s adjournment debate on legal aid cuts in the House of Commons marked a change in tone among MPs who, before Christmas, had not made much of the Ministry of Justice’s proposed £350m annual cut to the legal aid budget. What became evident in the debate, secured by Labour ...
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News
Whitehall faces conflict with lawyers over plans to cut immigration
Immigration was not high on the political agenda at the millennium. Indeed, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, the new immigration and work permit rules that emerged in the UK were seen by many businesses and their advisers as a spirited attempt to get ...
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Time not called on hourly bills
The hourly billing model for law firms is still ‘largely intact’ and is too profitable for firms to be incentivised to move away from it, according to a leading professional services consultant. Maureen Broderick said her research indicated professional services firms and consultancies that operate in ...