Headlines – Page 1473
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Joint LA panel to save £1.5m
Six London boroughs have combined to slash almost £1.5m a year in legal fees. The London Boroughs Legal Alliance, which links lawyers from Harrow, Hammersmith & Fulham, Camden, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Kensington & Chelsea councils, aims to save £1.44m through a pioneering collaboration.
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Legal process outsourcing is ‘here to stay’
Legal process outsourcing (LPO) is ‘here to stay’ and attracting interest from investors, a leading practitioner claimed last week. Mark Lewis, head of outsourcing at City firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, said there are ‘a number of private equity providers knocking around the City offering quite a ...
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SRA rules out lowering premiums in assigned risks pool
The Solicitors Compensation Fund looks set to receive a £5m boost to its reserves which could ease the financial pressure on individual firms, under plans being put forward at the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s board meeting today. However, in a separate development the SRA has concluded that ...
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MoJ review on separate budgets for criminal and civil legal aid
The Ministry of Justice has announced a review of the way the £2bn legal aid budget is delivered which could see separate civil and criminal funds run by different bodies. The review came as legal aid lawyers warned that firms providing social welfare work are at ...
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Mental illness – a death sentence in China
Acupuncture and herbal remedies – that’s what Chinese medicine means to most of us. But now the Beijing government has come up with a new form of medication. It’s a cure for bipolar disorder, it’s permanent and it takes just seconds to administer.
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Costly choice
In his Euro blog last week, Jonathan Goldsmith could barely hide his excitement following the judgment by the European Court of Justice in the Eschig case, in which it was held that a clause in an Austrian legal expenses policy did not in fact allow...
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Homme d’affaires
I suppose it is the function of influential thinktanks to take away one’s breath. The College of Law’s Legal Services Policy Institute (‘Scrap training contracts’, see [2009] Gazette, 24 September, 1) certainly does that. New entrants to the profession are overqualified? I don’t think so.
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Subjecting terror suspects to triple jeopardy is an affront to justice
by Dr Amir A Majid LLM DCLis a barrister and reader in law at London Metropolitan University. He is also a part-time immigration judge and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Islamic State Practices in International Law On 11 September, a judge at Woolwich Crown Court ...
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It is time to develop pan-European anti-corruption measures
by Drago Kos, the president of the Council of Europe's Group of States against CorruptionIt is common knowledge that corruption is one of the most dangerous factors jeopardising the rule of law, the economy and democratic development. The reason is straightforward: corruption attacks systems from within and is often facilitated ...
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Bruce Willis can help you improve your online image. Sort of
I went to see the new Bruce Willis movie at the weekend, Surrogate, and it brought to mind two legal marketing topics. For those of you who have not seen the film...
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Brussels simplifies rules on cross-border successions
The European Commission has today adopted a proposal that should greatly simplify the rules on successions with an international dimension in the EU. The aim is to make life easier for citizens by laying down common rules enabling the competent authority and law applicable ...
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The true cost of legal aid cuts
The legal services industry in the UK generates around £15bn a year, which is 1.3% of GDP, while public funding of legal services amounts to just over £2bn. Interestingly, I attended a presentation recently which pointed out that this sum is less than the combined annual fee income of two ...
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Will there be a global code of conduct?
I have just returned from the annual conference of the International Bar Association (IBA) in Madrid – the largest ever, with more than 5,000 lawyers from around the world. It wasn’t the best-designed conference to attend...
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Don’t give away the Crown jewels – hold on, where are those Crown jewels?
I see that that venerable London institution, the London Evening Standard, is becoming a freebie after 182 years of Londoners paying for it. The most interesting comment on this came from the Standard’s editor Geordie Greig...
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Local government: determining bias – and what is a public authority?
‘In law,’ Lord Steyn once reminded us, ‘context is everything’. And context was particularly relevant on 24 June this year, when the Court of Appeal agreed with Mr Justice Collins that a planning inspector’s decision was tainted by apparent bias...
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London and the south-east are learning from the lessons of the downturn
Money is still being made in London and its environs, with a recent bellwether survey suggesting that large law firms – of which the region has more than its fair share – are ‘over the worst’.
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Muttley crew
As lawyers know, when the Legal Services Act 2007 comes fully into force, they will be able to choose from lots of different ‘vehicles’ in which to operate. Speaking at the Young Barristers conference last weekend, Robin Tolson QC of London’s Outer Temple, clearly a fan of the Wacky ...
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Reasons not to be cheerful
Obiter was shocked this week to hear some sad news about the legal profession. Apparently lawyers are the ‘least happy’ professionals in the UK, according to recruiters Badenoch & Clark. In a survey of thousands of (pretty grumpy) professionals, only 52% of lawyers ...
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Ode to nowhere
On no – what have we done. After being roundly castigated for describing conveyancing and probate as ‘prosaic’, the Gazette coupled a shamefaced apology with a tongue-in-cheek plea for poems celebrating those undervalued disciplines. And still they come. This week Peter W Marsh, of Peter ...