Headlines – Page 1497
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My experience as a conveyancing client
They say moving home is one of the most stressful things you can do in life. Having just moved house myself, I can understand why. But it did at least provide me with a useful insight into the conveyancing process from a client’s perspective. And I’m afraid the news isn’t ...
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Law Society Council votes against referral fees
The Law Society will lobby the government and Legal Services Board to ban the use of referral fees by all providers of legal services. The Law Society’s council voted to change its policy on referral fees yesterday. It adopted a motion by council member Sue Carter ...
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Government offender management IT project a ‘shambles’
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has branded the government’s delayed and over-budget IT project to set up a single database to manage offenders through the prison and probation services a ‘shambles’, in a damning report published today. Five years after the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) ...
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Family judgments to be made available online in pilot areas
Judgments in some family cases will be made available online as part of a 12-month Ministry of Justice pilot, launched today. Family case decisions of the magistrates’ courts in Leeds and the magistrates’ court and county court in Cardiff will be published in what the MoJ ...
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Lawyers lick their lips over banking work
Today’s official (but much leaked) announcement of the government’s plans for Lloyds and RBS comes as both banks are carrying out reviews of their legal panels. Law firms big and small, in the City or in the regions, must be licking their lips at the thought of being party to ...
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Notaries in revolt
I had business with a notary this week. Visiting a notary in Belgium – I suspect the same holds true in all of the continental countries in which they practise – is like entering a scene from a 19th-century French novel. Typically, you are ushered into a specially furnished room, ...
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Law firm partners ‘overpaid’, says Mayson
Law firm partners are paying themselves too much and their businesses will struggle to attract external investment because they are not worth as much as the partners believe, a leading commentator has warned. Professor Stephen Mayson, director of the Legal Services Policy Institute, said partners have ...
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CPS publishes ethical principles
The director of public prosecutions has today published a ‘statement of ethical principles’, setting out what is expected of public prosecutors in England and Wales. Keir Starmer QC said the document, which sets out the ethical principles that underpin and guide the work of public prosecutors, ...
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Red tape cut for forced marriage orders
Local authorities can issue orders to protect vulnerable adults and children from being forced into marriage without seeking the leave of the court, under new powers introduced yesterday. Forced Marriage Protection Orders can include orders to compel a person to hand over passports to prevent someone ...
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LSC launches tender for Community Legal Advice Centre in Barking & Dagenham
The Legal Services Commission has announced the launch of a tender for the new £2.1m Community Legal Advice Centre (CLAC) in Barking & Dagenham. The new service to provide a one-stop-shop for legal advice and representation will be jointly funded by the LSC and Barking & ...
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Law firm standards should inform their commercial behaviour
Regular readers will know that I am an advocate of law firms getting their acts together as businesses, but this is not to say that solicitors should in any way give up the particularly high service standards set for the protection of clients’ best interests.
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Does the UK spend too much on legal aid?
England and Wales has ‘one of the highest per capita spends in the world’ on legal aid, the Ministry of Justice said this week. Well there’s no surprise there; that little snippet is regularly trotted out by the government when it is responding to Gazette reports on legal aid cuts.
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QLTS will ensure all UK solicitors will meet the highest standards
For several years the Solicitors Regulation Authority has been working on a new scheme to help ensure that the public can be confident that all solicitors, regardless of how they qualified, are competent to practise in England and Wales. The importance of this is indicated by the fact that about ...
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Data page for October 2009
The data page is the financial rates and data complied for the Law Society Gazette by MoneyFacts Group, the UK's largest supplier of savings and mortgage data. DownloadsDownload the data page for October 2009 belowdata page 20 October 2009 (163kb)
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How law firms can use social networking to stay ahead of the pack
Over the past two years or so, the way solicitors network, interact and go about business development has undergone a profound, but almost unnoticed, change.Back in 2007, I wrote a feature for the Gazette on how social networking would change the way solicitors did business with each other and with ...
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Probate: privileged wills and not-so-helpful help
Just how unusual it is to have a modern case on privileged wills is, perhaps, indicated by the comment of judge Peter Langan at the start of his judgment in Re Estate of Ashley Edward Servoz-Gavin, deceased 14 September 2009: ‘The case has involved a forensic journey on a path ...
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Personal injury
Armed forces – Compensation – Medical treatment Secretary of State for Defence v (1) Anthony John Ross Duncan (2) Matthew Richard McWilliams: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Keene, Carnwath, Elias): 12 October 2009 ...
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Employment
Employers’ duties – Honest belief – Strict liability – Transfer of undertakings Royal Mail Group Ltd v Communication Workers Union: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Waller, Hughes, Rimer): 14 October 2009 ...
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Lending credibility
I write on behalf of the Council of Mortgage Lenders in response to Alan Tunkel’s letter (see [2009] Gazette, 1 October, 9). Mr Tunkel states that ‘over the last decade or so the CML has imposed on solicitors who sign certificates of title ever-increasing obligations’.
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Immigration and turning up to court
While thumbing through previous copies of the Gazette I found an article from 4 June 2009 which stated that a defendant had escaped confiscation proceedings because she was unable to find an advocate who was willing to represent her under the legal aid rate. This article emphasised the importance of ...