Headlines – Page 1548
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Criminal defence lawyers call for all police forces to provide interpreters
Criminal defence lawyers have launched a campaign to ensure all police forces provide qualified interpreters to non-English speaking detainees at police stations. A 2007 national agreement on the use of interpreters – drawn up by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform in consultation with the Association ...
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Fees scheme may defuse VHCC row
A breakthrough in the dispute threatening to disrupt trials of very high cost criminal cases (VHCCs) could be in sight following the publication of new funding proposals. The Legal Services Commission is proposing to set up separate payment schemes for litigators and advocates, moving away ...
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Retreat over sole practitioner fee hike
Fierce protests have helped persuade the Solicitors Regulation Authority to ditch plans to charge sole practitioners an additional £300 on top of their practising certificates (see [2008] Gazette, 18 December, 1). The SRA had proposed £300 as an interim solution pending a comprehensive review of fees ...
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Culture shift needed to ease bench route
The tribunals system offers valuable opportunities for solicitors to get a foot on the judicial ladder, but a ‘culture change’ within firms is needed before more can make it onto the bench, a senior solicitor judge has told the Gazette. Gary Hickinbottom, the Deputy Senior President ...
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Family lawyers braced for surge in divorce cases
Family lawyers are bracing themselves for what looks set to be a rush of couples starting divorce proceedings next week. The first Monday after children return to school following Christmas is traditionally the busiest day in the divorce lawyer’s calendar. This year that day falls on ...
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SRA scraps solo fee hike
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has scrapped plans to charge sole practitioners an additional practising fee of £300. At a meeting of the SRA Board (see Gazette 18 December 2008), members indicated that a fee for sole practitioners should be less than the £180 payable by ...
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Solicitors turned authors reveal what it takes to get published
‘I still feel like a lawyer who writes,’ says Neil White. ‘I’m trying to get my head around the idea that I’m a writer who’s a lawyer. It still feels like a bit of a hobby.’ But signing your second three-book deal with HarperCollins, as he has just done, should ...
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Loss on sale relief and bankruptcy of a residuary beneficiary
There is something of a credit crunch flavour to this update, as it covers bankruptcy and inheritance tax problems caused by falling values.
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Human rights
Constitutional law – Aliens - Constitutional reform - EC law - Right to free elections- Sark R (on the application of Barclay & Ors) v Secretary of State for Justice & Ors: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Pill, Jacob, ...
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Dame Hazel Genn warns of 'downgrading' of civil justice
Mediation ‘is not about just settlement’, said Professor Dame Hazel Genn earlier this month. ‘It is just about settlement.’ This pithy attack on received wisdom aptly summed up three excoriating Hamlyn lectures in which the professor of socio-legal studies at University College London stripped away some ...
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Digesting the best reads for Christmas
SilksDick Francis, Felix FrancisMichael Joseph, £18.99 The doyen of British thriller writers returns (with the help of his son) for his 41st time over the jumps, this time colliding his beloved world of horseracing with that of m’learned friends.
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Festive update of a timeless classic
Prudence was dead. There was no doubt about that. The register of her burial was signed by the governor of the Bank of England. Jack Scrooge signed it. Old Prudence was as dead as a door-nail. Yet Scrooge never painted out Prudence’s name. Oh! He was ...
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Bid by civil law notaries to protect their monopoly
The news item ‘CCBE warning on threat of notaries’ highlighted what is going on behind the scenes in Brussels (see [2008] Gazette, 4 December, 3). As vice-president of the Notaries Society of England and Wales, I attended the Forum on Judicial Cooperation in Civil Matters; ...
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Gradual adoption of e-conveyancing
I write in response to the letter from Andrew Bingham of 27 November (see [2008] Gazette, 27 November, 11). Land Registry has always made it clear that we intend to introduce e-conveyancing stage by stage, rather than in a one-off ‘big bang’ - an approach we ...
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Prescribing a review of healthcare services
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said in his letter last week: 'Contrary to Dr Payne-James’s view, nurses are well-trained specialists and deliver high-quality care day in, day out'. I have to protest most strongly that Dr Carter ascribes to me views ...
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Property solicitors can shrug off the gloom
As I was watching television the other day, it occurred to me that there was one part of the UK which had been completely unaffected by the downturn. Here, the words credit crunch had never ever been mentioned, let alone caused difficulties. Where was this utopian land that had shrugged ...
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2009 a year to endure rather than prosper
Many practitioners could be forgiven for bidding a hearty good riddance to 2008, but for the fact that 2009 will almost certainly be even more challenging. In a week when the normally taciturn Barclays chief executive John Varley was accused of talking down the housing ...
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Sole practitioners condemn fee rise
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) will consider scrapping proposals to charge 4,500 sole practitioners an additional practising fee of £300 a year, the Gazette has learned.
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New guideline hourly rates are unveiled
New interim guideline hourly rates (GHR) were released in December - but could be slashed in future for personal injury and clinical negligence work if the committee that recommends levels decides that referral fees should not be built into them. The advisory committee on civil ...
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Legal aid advocates to face quality assurance test
Quality inspections for publicly funded criminal defence advocates are on the horizon under plans unveiled by the Legal Services Commission (LSC) this week. The commission said it would test a ‘quality assurance scheme’ on some 250 barristers and solicitors at Crown Courts from February next year. ...