Headlines – Page 1487
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Law Society Charity donates £369,000 to good causes
The Law Society Charity donated £369,000 to good causes over the past year despite the recession, it announced today. Its accounts for the 2008/09 financial year showed a 3.4% drop in grants made compared to the previous year. The charity supports organisations ...
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Government moves could hit City pay packets
Perhaps London’s investment bankers are wishing they’d chosen a career in corporate law instead. Alistair Darling looks set to come down heavily on banker bonuses in his pre-budget speech today, with commentators predicting a super tax on bonuses in excess of the impending 50% income tax for high earners.
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Generation gap
It came as a breath of fresh air to read in last week’s leader how as a profession we complain that we are no longer respected, while, on the facing page, a letter from Peter S Hughes confirmed his rugged independence and refusal to enter into referral fee arrangements.
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Ethics and the legal profession, part three
In the last of three articles describing the history of ethics and the legal profession, Mark Humphries looks at the development of professional regulation and considers future ethical challenges
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The ‘first’ justice commissioner – a three-minute guide
Who? Viviane Reding has just been appointed as the commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship in José Manuel Barroso’s new European Commission. As such, she will be responsible for the lawyers’ portfolio, along with the many justice issues that the commission now deals with. She is the first to ...
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What to watch in invoice finance
Invoice finance has grown enormously in the last decade after the banks had finally understood that they could not easily obtain a fixed charge over book debts. Rather than rely solely on a floating charge, banks realised that the safest way of financing the cashflow of ...
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Sharing spaces for lawyers may work, but only if lawyers want them to
I was travelling home on the tube the other day and the chap next to me was tapping away on a Windows Mobile device. He looked like an IT type so I engaged him in conversation. Nice fella – turns out he was working on a government project to create ...
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Family law
Birth parents – Children’s rights – Residence orders Re B (a child): SC (Lord Hope (Deputy President), Lady Hale, Lord Collins, Lord Kerr, Lord Clarke): 19 November 2009 The appellant ...
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Clinical negligence
Blood disorders – Causation – Duty of care – Genetic testing (1) Hanan Basem Farraj (2) Basem Farraj (claimants/first respondents) v (1) King’s Healthcare NHS Trust (KCH) (first defendant/part 20 claimant/appellant) (2) Cytogenetic DNA Services Ltd (CSL) (second defendant/part ...
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Criminal law: youth justice and sentencing
Major changes are being made to the way that courts may sentence young offenders. On 27 April, provisions were brought into force to increase the use of referral orders. These are mandatory if the offence is imprisonable and a first-time offender admits the offence and all connected offences, and the ...
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Education and training is about much more than CPD
As the legal landscape changes, lawyers are finding that it is no longer good enough for them to be just good lawyers – they must also run their firms more effectively and understand their commercial clients better. As Maureen Miller, the Law Society’s head of membership services, points out: ‘It ...
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What is the point of being a solicitor?
Can someone tell me what is the point of being a solicitor? To get a practising certificate, years of study and financial hardship must be endured. Those who survive struggle to get a training contract. Those that eventually get the coveted practising certificate then join one of the most stressful ...
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Demoralised lawyers chasing their tails
I read about Lord Bach’s apparent apparent support for compulsory pro bono.
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Importance of legal sector to UK economy is underappreciated
On becoming Law Society president I resolved that the commercial success of all English and Welsh law firms should be recognised and applauded. Legal services are more than just a British success story – they are an essential part of the UK economy. If the former ...
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Maintaining our integrity
I write to comment on Michael R Moore’s letter about referral fees. I qualified in 1976 and can relate to and empathise with all that he recounts – with the exception of his final paragraph.
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Removing legal aid for non-residents is a blow to human rights
by Phil Shiner, a human rights lawyer and head of Public Interest Lawyers Baha Mousa died in a filthy latrine in Basra on 15 September 2003. He had been tortured to death by British soldiers and had suffered 93 different injuries. He and his hotel colleagues ...
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Losing faith in the solicitors profession?
Is the profession losing faith – both in itself and the future? We ask because the Gazette’s letters and web pages have metamorphosed into agony columns. The underlying refrain is that solicitors are no longer respected as professionals; no longer due the degree of deference and consideration that reflects a ...
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Candid camera
Lawyers dread the Christmas party for many reasons: being cornered by the office bore/letch, getting so drunk you might tell the senior partner what you really think, or just the thought of hitting tomorrow’s billing target with a thumping headache.
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Worse for wear
The launch of a new book, Employment Law Practice: Strategies for Success, has got the somewhat rumpled Obiter a little worried. Along with rather earnest chapters on ‘mastering non-contentious law’ and the like, the book has a more entertaining section on what to wear. There is ‘nothing worse’, the four ...
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Legally Blonde competition winner
Obiter is mighty impressed with readers’ knowledge of showbiz trivia. Last week’s competition asked the killer question, ‘Big-hearted’ Arthur Askey’s pre-war comedy partner went on to play a barrister in a much-loved ITV legal comedy drama. Who was he, and who was the ...