Headlines – Page 1132
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Client money focus as SRA reviews mortgage fraud strategy
Cutting the need for solicitors to hold client money in conveyancing transactions is among measures being looked at by the Solicitors Regulation Authority as part of a review of its strategy to help firms reduce the risk of mortgage fraud. The SRA announced today that it ...
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Managing the risk of IP theft
Intellectual property theft is often linked to cases of redundancies or team moves, where an employee leaves the company, taking with them sensitive documents such as business plans, customer information, or financial results. The employee will then offer a next employer this IP or will use it to start a ...
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The legal services reform catechism of cliché
My attention has been drawn to a recent tendency to slackness among innovators in the supply and regulation of legal services. I refer of course to the failure to include every possible cliché in emailed announcements concerning the said innovations. As a corrective, the Gazette offers ...
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All-round roasting for family justice reforms
MPs, judges and expert practitioners yesterday condemned the government’s planned legal aid cuts and family justice reforms, warning that the fiscal imperative driving them will harm children. Plaid Cymru MP and barrister Elfyn Llwyd said the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, which from ...
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Nicklinson widow launches article 8 appeal
The widow of locked-in syndrome victim Tony Nicklinson is to pursue the appeal that her late husband would have brought if he was still alive, it emerged today. Nicklinson failed to convince the High Court in mid-August that friends and doctors should be allowed to help ...
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Delays in the family justice system
How often has it been said that delay is the cancer which eats away at our system of justice? The Civil Procedure Rules were brought in on a tide of enthusiasm to reduce delay. The latest Family Procedure Rules adopt much of the style, form and content of their civil ...
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Increase in damages by 10%
In Simmons v Castle [2012] EWCA Civ 1039, the Court of Appeal has added to the general splashing about which precedes the enactment of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. In an effort to provide ‘proper, prospective warning’, it has jumped in ahead of the implementation ...
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A drain on the public purse
Two items in your 5 July issue have prompted me to do what I have never done in the 41 years since I was admitted – write to the Gazette. On page 12 you printed a letter applauding the Supreme Court for applying article 8 of the European Convention on ...
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Help is at hand
Returning after a short period away from the office, I found the inbox filled with invitations to attend courses and join subscription groups offering support to compliance officers for legal practice (COLPs). Timely and worthwhile, no doubt.
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Time to buck trend
Why, since the Law Society’s regulatory function passed to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, should we as a profession (in common with our brethren at the bar) be overseen by so many authoritarian organisations which we are compelled to fund? Surely both the ombudsman and the ...
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Without prejudice
I read Joshua Rozenberg’s 30 August article ‘In good faith’ with interest. The issue of whose rights prevail in the case of conflict is complex. I disagree with his viewpoint though.
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Learning curve
Lucinda Moule called for more selection in state education to improve social mobility. She is wrong.
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Summertime blues as 250 law firms shut
More than 250 law firms have ceased conducting business since the start of summer, but observers are divided on whether the trend is the first sign of long-awaited consolidation or a statistical blip. Data published this week by the Solicitors Regulation Authority show a total ...
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Accutrainee welcomes first recruit
A groundbreaking scheme that finds trainees and seconds them to law firms on a temporary basis has welcomed its first recruit. Flora Hussey has become the first trainee to sign up to Accutrainee since it was launched last September. Trainees are taken on by Accutrainee but ...
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Admiral reveals referral fee income
Insurance giant Admiral has revealed that it rakes in £7 in personal injury referral fees for every vehicle it covers. The figure appears in the company’s half-year financial report, which lists modest increases in ‘other revenue’, including income from referral fees. Admiral insures 3.5m cars in ...
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Oligarch case whets appetite for more
A leading City lawyer says he would welcome more foreign litigation coming to London after the conclusion of a high-profile case involving two Russian oligarchs. The High Court last week found that exiled Russian Boris Berezovsky (pictured) had no claim to the business interests of Roman ...
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Law Society warning over 'monopoly' interpreting deals
The Law Society has warned of the ‘inherent risk’ in granting a monopoly contract to a single provider of courtroom interpreting, but said it lacks sufficient evidence to judge whether the contract awarded to Applied Language Solutions caused a ‘major structural problem’. Responding to the justice ...
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ABS newcomer eyes conveyancing panels
A conveyancing sole practitioner has become an alternative business structure – in a bid to get on to lenders’ conveyancing panels. Nicola Phillips, who has run her own firm in Horsham since 2008, told the Gazette that her status as a sole practitioner has excluded her from panels including those ...