Headlines – Page 1575
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Legal aid recovery threat
A six-figure claim lodged against a solicitor seven years after he gave up practice has raised the spectre of the Legal Services Commission (LSC) aggressively recouping historic legal aid funding, despite a partial amnesty agreed earlier this year. The commission has launched a High Court ...
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British female rowers win bronze at Olympics
Olympic rower Elise Laverick (right), who is set to join City firm Ashurst as a trainee solicitor, powered home to win bronze for Great Britain in the women’s double sculls in Beijing on Saturday alongside Anna Bebington. Laverick fought her way back to fitness after being the victim of a ...
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AWS to canvass members over pay gap
The Association of Women Solicitors (AWS) is to survey all 17,700 of its members in an attempt to identify why female solicitors are paid less than their male counterparts, the Gazette has learned. The Law Society’s Strategic Research Unit pay survey, published in May, revealed that ...
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Cartel case approaches
An innovative model for funding ‘risk-free’ group actions against business cartels could have its first court blooding this autumn, the scheme’s originators said this week. ‘Cartel Key’, launched by collective claimant specialist Cohen Milstein Hausfeld Toll and insurers FirstAssist Legal Protection, will remove a deterrent ...
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MoJ on alert over unregulated firm
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is seeking help in tracking down a claims-handling company that may have based itself overseas in a bid to avoid regulation, amid warnings that solicitors who take referrals from the company could face sanctions.
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SRA 'open to racism charge'
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has left itself ‘open to the charge of institutional racism’ because of its failure to address concerns that it investigates a disproportionate number of black and minority ethnic solicitors (BME), according to a report by former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Lord Ouseley.
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Mosley’s win: a slightly larger private world
The implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated into UK law article 8, guaranteeing the right to respect for private and family life, and its arch rival article 10, protecting the right to freedom of expression. Max Mosley’s hotly contested privacy action was the battlefield for the latest high-profile ...
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Employment
Automatically unfair dismissal – Completion – Delay - Disability discrimination - Completion of statutory procedure M Selvarajan v S Wilmot & Ors: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Mummery, Wilson, Stanley Burnton): 23 July 2008 ...
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Family law
Allocation of jurisdiction – Consent - Habitual residence - Parental responsibility Mark Ian Bush v Neena Bush: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Thorpe, Lawrence Collins, Rimer): 24 July 2008 ...
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Sentencing
Human rights – Penology and Criminology – Inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment – Life imprisonment R v David Francis Bieber (AKA Coleman): CA (Crim Div) (Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, Mr Justice Pitchford, Mrs Justice ...
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The rise in equine law
With riding an increasingly popular pastime there is a growing demand for equine lawyers to advise horse owners, both private and commercial. Around £4bn a year is spent on horses in Britain, according ...
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Challenging times
The new President of the Law Society looks at what lies ahead for the profession The presidency of the Law Society of England and Wales is a great privilege, and I consider myself particularly fortunate in having Robert Heslett as Vice-President and Linda Lee as Deputy ...
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Courting controversy
The time has come for the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court to stand down Radovan Karadzic’s first appearance at the United Nations war crimes tribunal last week must have come as a welcome distraction for those working at ...
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Peak practice
This week it is solicitors on foot – and at all altitudes too. A team of six from regional firm Geldards scaled the three tallest peaks in the UK – Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon – and came home first with a time of 23 hours and 29 minutes. ...
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Learning by degrees
Retired solicitor Robert Benjamin, 82, has finally finished his university degree more than 60 years after being forced to abandon his studies because he was conscripted to work in Britain’s mines during World War Two. The former Bevin Boy, as the mining conscripts were known, graduated ...
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Opportunity knocks
A ten-strong team at Sheffield-based solicitors Watson Esam swapped legal briefs for chasing fish in penguin suits as they raised £750 in the fun-filled It’s a Knockout competition. The obstacle event, held at Totley Primary School in Sheffield, raised £8,000 for St Luke’s Hospice. Senior partner Jay Bhayani enthused: ‘We ...
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Blunt words from the sharp end
Why should executive directors at the LSC earn so much more than those at the sharp end of legal services? I see that the Legal Services Commission (LSC) is advertising for no less than three executive directors at salaries of up to £140K each, ‘possibly more ...
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Rules & revolution
How extraordinary that the chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority should state, in relation to non-lawyer managers, ‘there is little regulatory sense in requiring, for example, those who have worked within firms and already have a detailed understanding of the accounts rules to go on a prescriptive course'. (see ...
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Supply and demand
For some years now the number of LPC passes (first sitting and after re-sitting) has been around 6,000 each year, while the number of training contracts signed has also been around 6,000. There is some slippage, which probably amounts to a few hundred not finding a training contract and, of ...