Headlines – Page 1395
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Employment fears spark call surge
Government spending cuts have triggered a sharp rise in employment law queries from consumers in the last three months, according to statistics from law firm network Contact Law seen by the Gazette. Employment-related calls accounted for one-fifth of the 28,000 calls received by the service in ...
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Lawyers call for details of £350m legal aid budget cut
Lawyers have called on the Ministry of Justice to give details of how it intends to cut £350m from the legal aid budget, following the outcome of the government’s spending review, announced last week. Chancellor George Osborne told the House of Commons that the MoJ’s current ...
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Children 'at risk' over court fees
Solicitors have warned that local authorities may be deterred from placing vulnerable children into care, following the government’s decision not to scrap the controversial court fees paid by councils in care and supervision cases. In a ministerial statement last week, justice minister Jonathan Djanogly said the ...
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Solicitor jailed for fraud
A Canterbury solicitor has been jailed for five years after pleading guilty to 14 fraud-related offences. Derek Speed, a former probate solicitor at Kent firm EMD Law, was sentenced last week after admitting the counts of fraud at Maidstone Crown Court.
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New advocacy proposals 'prejudice' solicitors
A proposed new quality assurance scheme for criminal advocates could prejudice solicitors because it places too much weight on the views of judges, an advocates group has warned. The Solicitors Association of Higher Court Advocates (SAHCA) has voiced concerns about the ‘over-reliance’ on judicial evaluation proposed ...
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Supreme Court backs right to police station advice
Defence lawyers have welcomed a Supreme Court ruling confirming the right to legal advice at the police station, and warned that the Ministry of Justice will have to ‘think carefully’ before introducing any reform that seeks to limit it. Giving judgment in an appeal from the ...
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New book offers intriguing analysis of role of feminist judges
Is it possible to be both a judge and a feminist? That’s the intriguing question posed by Baroness Hale in her foreword to a fascinating new book, Feminist Judgments from Theory to Practice (Hart Publishing, £22.95). Hale is, of course, the UK’s most senior woman judge. ...
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LSC rules out appeal against family tender judgment
The Legal Services Commission has announced that it will not appeal against the High Court’s judgment following the Law Society’s successful challenge to the family tender process. It said any appeal would only prolong uncertainty over the future of the family contracts, causing difficulties for ...
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Sketch show
You can’t beat a good courtroom drama. So Obiter was delighted to receive a review copy of court artist Patricia Coleman’s sketches, brought together in a book with text by Evening Standard courts correspondent Paul Cheston. It includes scenes from some of Obiter’s favourite cases, from the appearance of Catherine ...
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Excellence adventure
There was quite a buzz at the Law Society’s packed Excellence Awards at Old Billingsgate in London last week. Nigel Priestley, who received the prestigious gong of private practice Solicitor of the Year, used the podium to praise the success of Huddersfield Law Society’s twinning project with Uganda, which he ...
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Blonde ambition
Another chance for Gazette readers to win tickets to Obiter’s favourite legal-themed West End show, Legally Blonde: the Musical. For anyone unfamiliar with the plot, college sweetheart and homecoming queen Elle Woods (played by Sheridan Smith) ‘doesn’t take no for an answer’. So when her boyfriend dumps her for someone ...
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Proactive firms are setting the pace for change
Membership of a respected profession once conferred a much greater equivalence of proficiency and status than it does today. Consider the almost comical horror with which many lawyers formerly greeted the notion that solicitors should be allowed to differentiate themselves...
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Radmacher judgment will boost demand for pre-nups – but issues remain
by Alison Bull, team leader associate at Mills & Reeve Publicity surrounding the Supreme Court’s judgment in Radmacher (rather than the outcome of the case) is likely to be the single most important factor in increasing demand for pre-marital agreements.
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Vulnerable people 'not consumers'
In the interview with Jonathan Djanogly it is interesting to note that, while not wanting to discuss the legal aid budget, the minister is quoted as saying: ‘Our priority is not about what lawyers do or the number of lawyers there are doing things. Our priority is legal representation ...
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Slur on my firm's services
I can only applaud the action taken by Hertfordshire firm Judkins and its partner Paul Judkins. My own firm has recently had its appeal concerning removal from the Santander panel, for Abbey, denied. I regard this as an act in restraint of trade and a slur on my firm’s services. ...
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Solicitors are still having difficulty with service of proceedings
The Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) are generally seen as being a success. True, they have not brought down the cost of litigation, but they have given a degree of certainty as to procedure. The fact that solicitors are still falling foul of the CPR when it comes to service by ...
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Future LPC students need to be better informed about career prospects
In your article ‘LPC aptitude test risks "clones"’, you quote Kevin Poulter of the Junior Lawyers Division as stating that ‘there are between 10,000 and 20,000 LPC graduates currently looking for training contracts’. This almost certainly overestimates alarmingly the oversupply of LPC graduates. No one knows how many LPC graduates ...
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Civil procedure
Committal for contempt – Suspended committal orders – Judgment debtor’s failure to attend court Broomleigh Housing Association Ltd v Emeka Okonkwo: CA (Civ Div): 13 October 2010 The appellant (O) ...
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Relevance of happiness to the legal profession
There is something for everyone in Nancy Levit and Douglas Linder’s book The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law. Levit and Linder are law professors at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and what they say about the US is relevant to the English legal profession. ...