Headlines – Page 1121
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Cut oral hearings, says Slaughter and May’s Boardman
An influential magic circle partner today makes a public call for a reduction in oral hearings to reform a legal system which he says has returned to the ‘dark days’ described in Dickens’ Bleak House. Nigel Boardman, partner at Slaughter and May, says lawyers should ...
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Super regulator goes shopping for legal panel
The Legal Services Board today opened the application process to join its panel of legal advisers. The super regulator says it requires support for public and private law, legislative drafting and litigation support. Most pieces of work are typically valued below £5,000 but more complex and ...
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The New Putney Debates - a fairer future?
by Melanie Strickland, a solicitor and Occupy London supporter One year ago Occupy set up a camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral. During the four-and-a-half-month tented occupation, it hosted a wide-ranging programme of events in its Tent City University, and was visited by many thousands of people.
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No place for private equity in law firms, say finance chiefs
More than three-quarters of finance directors at leading commercial law firms believe private equity investment is inappropriate. In a survey of directors at 25 of the top 100 firms, 77% were unhappy with law firms attracting capital through private equity investors. An even greater number - ...
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Cameron’s rehab scheme ‘empty rhetoric’ says Labour
David Cameron has outlined what he called the coalition’s ‘tough but intelligent’ approach to crime, with payment by results for companies and charities providing rehabilitation services. In a well-trailed speech at the Centre for Social Justice thinktank in London, the prime minister said ‘retribution’ and tough ...
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Brace yourself for unprecedented change, says master of rolls
Implementing the Jackson costs reforms will inevitably lead to satellite litigation, the master of the rolls has warned. He urged courts and lawyers to ‘do what they can’ to minimise it. In a wide-ranging speech at the Law Society yesterday, Lord Dyson (pictured) said that the ...
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Lawyers should not fear Scottish independence
The signs are that lawyers have little to fear from Scottish independence. Of course with the polls currently showing a clear majority against independence, that reassurance may remain an academic comfort for the legal profession. But of the many arguments that will be wheeled out against independence – from Nato ...
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McKinnon solicitor is Legal Personality of the Year
Karen Todner, the London solicitor who represented ‘Pentagon hacker’ Gary McKinnon, received a standing ovation as she collected the Law Society Gazette’s Legal Personality of the Year award at last night’s Law Society Excellence awards ceremony. Todner (pictured) has been at the forefront of high-profile extradition ...
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Bankruptcy tourism
Any English judge sitting regularly in the personal insolvency jurisdiction is likely, at one time or another, to have considered a debtor’s petition in which all the listed debts were incurred in a foreign country, in a foreign currency and, usually, to foreign creditors. The currency was probably the euro, ...
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Advancing the case for swift action
In January, the Gazette published an article by me about the Stop Delaying Justice initiative which was introduced that month. Responses were invited. Last month, the Gazette sent me about a dozen emails from defence solicitors. They all make good points. I am grateful, particularly to those who managed to ...
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Costs caps and multiple parties
In recent years, the Patents County Court (PCC), in particular through the efforts of Judge Colin Birss QC, has taken great strides to make IP litigation more affordable and accessible for smaller businesses. A key provision at its disposal is a cap on the costs which a party may be ...
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Poor nations need help now over climate change
Former Ireland president Mary Robinson is right to advocate helping those in need due to the very real effects of climate change.
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Do we need more law students?
Further to the article of 24 September at Gazette Online by Ian Wimbush, I write to express my astonishment at the writer’s statement in his final paragraph: ‘That, with the recent consolidation and the increase in law students, tends to paint a rather more optimistic picture for the future of ...
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Reality check
Do we have any sympathy with the comments of the solicitor judge whose name was withheld on request, bemoaning the changes to the pension regime for the judiciary? I think not.
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Just business
Once again the profession is tying itself in knots over pro bono work, in effect fiddling while Rome burns (‘Should pro bono be compulsory?’).
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Roundtable: the changing role of corporate counsel
In-house lawyers in commerce and industry operate in a landscape that has changed hugely since the turn of the millennium. This new terrain has been shaped by across-the-board growth in the demands of regulators, investors and legislators worldwide, and by an increased sensitivity to litigation risks.
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Lost generation fears of Labour's Sadiq Khan
Criminal legal aid solicitors will be such an endangered species by 2015 that Labour would not need to take forward plans for price-competitive tendering in the sector. That is the startlingly frank opinion of shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan MP, who has given the Gazette ...
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Top firms risk collapse, US economist warns
The very largest corporate law firms are wedded to an unsustainable business model designed around support for their own massive overheads, one of the US’s leading general counsel has warned, predicting more collapses like that of US firm Dewey LeBoeuf. Michael Trotter, now with US firm ...
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Study recommends shift in CPD provision
The annual requirement for 16 hours of continuing professional development (CPD) should not be extended and could even be lowered, according to a report commissioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The Nottingham Law School study also says law firms should have to contribute to the ...
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Fund will assume risks of ABSs, says MoJ
The solicitors’ compensation fund will take on the risks of alternative business structures indefinitely following the shelving of plans for a separate fund, the ...