Headlines – Page 1477
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Personal injury lawyers hit by new fees for RTA claims
Claimant personal injury solicitors face a cut of up to 53% in the fees they receive under a new road traffic accident claims process agreed last week. However, the claimant groups which negotiated the deal with insurers said this will be balanced by a more streamlined ...
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Chancery Lane responds to PII concerns – statement from the chief executive
The Law Society has moved to address growing disquiet among practising solicitors about the problems they have encountered renewing their professional indemnity insurance. Chancery Lane announced last month that it had written to the Association of British Insurers and individual insurers asking them for an ...
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MP rallies miners for legal action against legal adviser
Hundreds of injured former coal miners are being rallied to sue their legal adviser in the first coordinated legal action for alleged under-settling of government compensation claims, the Gazette can reveal. John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw, told the Gazette he is gathering potential claimants to ...
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Call for lawyers to speak plain English
A senior lecturer at City Law School has called on lawyers to abandon complex and archaic ‘legalese’ and speak clearly. David Emmet said lawyers have a habit of using words and expressions that are more complicated than they need to be. Typical ...
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Hike in TUPE litigation claims against law firms
The number of law firms facing litigation under Transfer of Undertakings, Protection of Employment (TUPE) regulations has risen sharply, the Gazette has learned. Gordon Turner (pictured), employment specialist at London firm Partners Law, said he has acted on nine cases where law firms have been ...
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500 firms to enter assigned risks pool at indemnity deadline
A record 500 firms are set to fall into the assigned risks pool (ARP) today, as the deadline expires for professional indemnity insurance (PII) renewal. This means around one in 20 law firms will be forced to spend a quarter of their fee income on emergency ...
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National bar leaders rally in defence of legal aid
More than 50 bar leaders from around the world have issued a communiqué in support of access to justice, urging governments to fulfil their duty to provide adequate legal aid funding. They gathered today at the Law Society in London at the opening of the legal ...
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Free Roman Polanski – now!
Doesn’t your heart go out to film director Roman Polanski? He was arrested in Switzerland last week and yet all the poor guy had done, according to the 1977 charges against him, was sodomise a 13-year-old girl and force her to engage in ‘oral copulation’.
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BSB to decide barristers’ role in new legal structures
The Bar Standards Board will decide the role barristers will be allowed to have in new legal structures in November, it announced today. By then, it says, it will have analysed the results of research it commissioned into the benefits to consumers of the various different ...
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Support service launched for bereaved families of victims
A new national service giving one-to-one support for the bereaved families of murder and manslaughter victims is to begin work this financial year, justice secretary Jack Straw has announced. National organisation Victim Support is receiving an extra £2m from the government to fund the new ...
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Bach rejects Society’s legal aid fee cut fears
Legal aid minister Lord Bach (pictured) has rejected Chancery Lane’s demand for an extension to the consultation period on proposed criminal legal aid cuts. He also dismissed the Law Society’s allegation that the August consultation paper Legal aid: funding reforms is ‘incoherent’ and ‘deeply flawed’. ...
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New IT director blog: how to do, and not to do, outsourcing
In his first instalment, the Masked IT Director reports from the frontlines of legal IT… a suppliers’ conferenceThe Alternative Legal IT Conference: catchy title, eh?...
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Could the LSC be the next target of government cuts?
Relations between the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Services Commission do not appear to have improved since my last post on the subject. Indeed, things may even have got worse.
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Immigration: what can lawyers do?
There has been a twist to my report last week that the incoming president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, has undertaken to separate justice and security issues at European level by creating a commissioner for justice and fundamental rights alone.
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Bar urges halt on contingency fees reform
The Bar Council has urged the government to halt plans to regulate contingency fees, to allow time for greater public debate. In its response to the Ministry of Justice’s consultation on regulating the damages-based agreements that are frequently used in employment cases, the council said proposed ...
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Law Society acts on ‘inflated’ indemnity premiums
The Law Society has written to every professional indemnity insurer asking for an ‘urgent response’ to its concerns over the ‘hugely inflated’ premiums being quoted ahead of this year’s renewal deadline. The Society said calls to its dedicated professional indemnity insurance helpline indicated that insurers were ...
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General practice firms: look in the mirror, before it's too late
Are some traditional, 'general practice' firms living in cloud cuckoo land? In terms of how well they're managing their firms and especially their staff, and how they're going about marketing themselves, I'm beginning to think they are.
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Legal profession
Costs –Intervention in solicitors’ practice – Suspected dishonesty – Solicitors Accounts Rules Shahrokh Mireskandari v Law Society: Ch D (Mr Justice Henderson): 4 September 2009 The court was required to determine issues of costs and other consequential matters ...
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Family law
Care orders – Interim orders – Likelihood of significant harm – Weight of evidence Re MGR (a child) sub nom Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council v (1) JD (2) JR (3) RD (4) MGR (by her guardian): CA (Civ Div) ...