Headlines – Page 1523
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FSA hires investigators to take on ‘boiler room’ scams
The Financial Services Authority is to boost its ability to combat ‘boiler room’ scams by recruiting 20 additional investigators to its enforcement division, the Gazette has learned. The extra staff will supplement the planned recruitment of 40 investigators by the FSA’s director of enforcement, Margaret ...
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Law Commission proposes new tests for expert witness evidence
Expert witness evidence may have to undergo formal reliability tests to determine whether it can be admitted in criminal trials under proposals from the Law Commission. A consultation published this week calls for guidelines to help judges determine whether or not evidence is ‘sufficiently trustworthy’ for a jury to consider. ...
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Why aren’t your computers talking with your phone system?
Law firms love the phone. They love letters too. This may be why they like faxes so much, given that they are a true combination of the two. These days they also love email, and even teleconferencing.
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LSB publishes business plan and cost recovery proposals
The Legal Services Board today published its business plan for 2009/10 and named its senior management team. The plan gives priority to work on regulatory independence, alternative business structures, providing effective redress and the development of a model of regulatory excellence in legal services. ...
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Copyright Tribunal overhaul will fast-track small claims
The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) today proposed to streamline large-scale Copyright Tribunal cases and allow smaller claims to be fast-tracked, as it launched a review of the tribunal’s rules. The IPO said the changes will make the tribunal quicker and cheaper to use, particularly for individuals ...
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Is £90,000 too much protection, or not enough?
First of all: I’m a fan of the single market, which means you can probably label me ‘pro-Europe’. Having sat through lectures on EU law and the law of the single market while at university...
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Social immobility the norm in legal profession
The legal world emerges badly from the findings of government research into social mobility published today. According to the Phase 1 report of the Cabinet Office’s Fair Access Panel, solicitors and barristers were far more likely than the population at large to have been privately schooled. ...
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Litigation: (nearly) the new alternative dispute resolution?
CEDR Solve, the dispute resolution services arm of the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution, announced that it has just dealt with its 15,000th referred dispute since its launch in 1990...
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Tax prosecutors to merge with CPS
The Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO) is to merge with the Crown Prosecution Service four years after it was set up, in a move to save public money and improve efficiency. The Attorney General, Lady Scotland QC (pictured), announced the change following a review of ...
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Green recovery will push environmental law mainstream
Robert Lee is Professor of Law at Cardiff Law School and a member of the academic panel at Landmark Chambers’ Centre for Environmental LawLast month’s Budget introduced a range of measures to encourage investment ...
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Scotland must try harder after report on trafficking
Scotland lags behind the rest of the UK in the fight against people trafficking. That is, at least, what a Scottish government report published earlier this month says.
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Legal aid - 60th anniversary
Steve Hynes is director of the Legal Action Group As it enters its seventh decade, and despite its flaws, legal aid remains one of the best such systems in the world, providing access to ...
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A roundup of several recent trademark decisions
Decisions on trademarks are handed down by a number of tribunals and come too thick and fast for the non-specialist practitioner to be alive to every one. What follows is a crash course in some of the most significant decisions of the past few months.
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Criminal procedure
Fraud – Disclosure orders – Jurisdiction – Realisable property King v Director of the Serious Fraud Office: HL (Lords Phillips of Worth Matravers, Scott of Foscote, Walker of Gestingthorpe, Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, Mance): 18 March 2009 ...
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Human rights
Criminal law – Discrimination – Peaceful enjoyment of possessions – Pubs and bars - Smoking R (on the application of Howitt) v Preston Magistrates’ Court: DC (Lord Justice Richards, Mr Justice Tugendhat): 19 March 2009 ...
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Personal inquiry
Civil procedure – Damages – Periodical payments orders Cobham Hire Services Ltd v Benjamin Eeles (by his mother & litigation friend Julie Eeles): CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Dyson, Thomas, Lady Justice Smith): 13 March 2009 ...
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What impact is the downturn having on Eastern Europe?
As Londoners struggled under a deluge of Siberian snow in February, the City played host to the Russian finance minister, Alexei Kudrin. Michael Pugh, a capital markets partner at Lovells who has been working in the Commonwealth of Independent States region since 1992, flew back from Moscow to the Guildhall ...
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Uncovering the potential of Brazil’s wine industry
Snaking our way upwards, through the lush, bucolic vegetation that hugs the rolling hills surrounding the coastal city of Port Alegre, it is hard to imagine that there is any sort of wine industry, let alone vineyard, in this thick sub-tropical landscape.
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Access to justice
‘You in the legal profession by any chance chief? I had that John Mortimer in the back of my cab once – lovely fella, he was. Didn’t half talk a lot, mind. Now then, the Law Society. Is it OK if I drop you at the corner, or do you ...