Headlines – Page 1500
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Woolf at the door
The ‘statutorily senile’ Lord Woolf, to quote his own words, entertained a capacity crowd last week with a lecture to the London Solicitors Litigation Association. The former lord chief justice was on fine form, Obiter is pleased to report. Spare no sympathy for criminal lawyers in portakabins, he said, referring ...
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Bumper bonuses are back, but don’t expect a return to business as usual
House prices have soared to a new record, bumper bonuses are back in the Square Mile and the stockmarket is booming. It’s deja vu all over again in London. After a painful bout of retrenchment quite without parallel, can the big City law firms expect a return to business as ...
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Diary of a redundancy (part three)
You punch in the number of the charity. ‘It’s a kind offer,’ you say into the telephone, and then hesitate. The charity has offered you a job as an adviser. The money is a third of what you were pulling in as a proper solicitor before those born-out-of-wedlock partners made ...
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Insurers plan advertising campaign for personal injury claims
A number of insurers are gearing up to launch advertising campaigns to persuade personal injury claimants in motor accidents to bypass solicitors and deal directly with the responsible party’s insurer, it is believed. The news comes as the Financial Services Authority confirmed that it does not ...
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Unregulated will writers failing clients, says Chancery Lane
Unregulated will writers are providing the public with unenforceable wills while charging for legal services they are not trained or regulated to provide, the Law Society claimed this week. Solicitors specialising in will writing told the Society they have been handed invalid wills drafted by unregulated ...
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Lord chief justice calls for rethink of court tradition
The operation of the traditional court needs to be rethought to take into account technological advances that have rapidly changed society and influenced jurors, the lord chief justice (pictured) said this week. Speaking a year after becoming head of the judiciary, Lord Judge said that the ...
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Boom time for litigation funding
Third-party litigation funding broker Calunius Capital has begun investing in its own cases, Gazette sister publication Litigation Funding will reveal this week, amid a flurry of activity in the litigation funding sector. Calunius said it is investing in litigation in conjunction with funders that ...
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Bar Council chairman in call to arms for barristers
Bar Council chairman Desmond Browne QC (pictured) last week criticised barristers’ apparent apathy regarding the ‘historic challenges’ facing the profession, following a disappointing response to this year’s council elections. With under a week to go before yesterday’s deadline, just three nominations had been received for ...
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Call for ‘hard line action’ on coal health compensation
The government has come under renewed pressure to probe the alleged undersettlement of coal health compensation claims, after an MP wrote to business secretary Lord Mandelson calling on him to take ‘hard line action’ against any law firms that might have undersettled. Dai Davies, Independent MP ...
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Call for ‘hard line action’ on coal health compensation
The government has come under renewed pressure to probe the alleged undersettlement of coal health compensation claims, after an MP wrote to business secretary Lord Mandelson calling on him to take ‘hard line action’ against any law firms that might have undersettled. Dai Davies, Independent MP ...
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SRA to look at ‘radical reform’ of assigned risks pool
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is soon to launch a consultation on ‘radical reform’ of the assigned risks pool. It is understood that proposals for consultation could include changes to the conditions for entry or even the demise of the pool. There ...
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Law Society slams legal aid ‘shambles’
Government policy on legal aid is a ‘shambles’ with no clear direction, the Law Society said this week. Chief executive Des Hudson said recent government announcements seemed to indicate that the Ministry of Justice is ‘jumping from one position to another’. The ...
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‘Super injunctions’ come under fire from senior judge
MPs were preparing to debate the impact of so-called super-injunctions on parliamentary proceedings as the Gazette went to press. This followed last week’s media feeding frenzy that saw renowned libel lawyers Carter-Ruck accused of trying to gag parliament on behalf of a client, the oil ...
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Court rules on legal privilege in Prudential case
Accountants and lawyers should operate on a ‘level playing field’ when it comes to disclosing legal advice on certain issues, a High Court judge said last week.
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Lord Woolf raps solicitors for CPR failings
Lord Woolf (pictured) has blamed lawyers, the judiciary and government for blunting the impact of his 10-year-old reforms to the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR). The retired law lord, addressing members of the London Solicitors Litigation Association last week, said lawyers had ‘made an industry’ of some ...
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New rules will help clients to challenge solicitors’ bills
Solicitors will have to give clients more information about how to challenge bills under new rules to be introduced by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The SRA board will decide on specific wording which solicitors must include when they send a bill, to ensure that clients know ...
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Claim of racial bias by insurers in indemnity cover
The Law Society is investigating allegations that professional indemnity brokers and insurers have discriminated against firms with African and Asian-sounding names, the Gazette has learned. The Society received a complaint to its professional indemnity insurance helpline from a solicitor in Birmingham, claiming that insurers were providing ...
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Lending credibility
I write on behalf of the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) in response to the letter from Alan Tunkel published in the Gazette on 1 October.
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SIF amateurs
Paul Hemelryk, in calling for the restitution of the Solicitors Indemnity Fund, obviously did not have the experience that I did with SIF.
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Shoosmiths and HP in pro bono tie-in with Prince's Trust
National firm Shoosmiths and the in-house legal team at computer giant HP yesterday launched a new pro bono initiative with the Prince's Trust youth charity to provide legal advice to young business people in the Thames Valley. They will give free legal advice to 18-30-year-olds who ...