All articles by John Hyde – Page 346
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Let’s stop car insurance blame game
Once you’ve finished this article I urge you to buy the Highway Code. Then spend every waking hour reading it, just to avoid ever getting behind the wheel again.
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Plaid Cymru hails legal devolution
Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader Elfyn Llwyd has insisted Wales can benefit from a separate legal jurisdiction - despite warnings it may harm the principality’s appeal to business. Llywd told the House of Commons last week that there would be legal and economic advantages to devolving the administration of justice. ...
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Insurers set for referral to competition watchdog over inflated premiums
Insurance companies are taking advantage of the system to inflate premiums for drivers by £225m a year, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) reports today. The competition watchdog says that after a road traffic accident, insurers of the not-at-fault driver and others, such as brokers, ...
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Clarke plea on prisons population
Justice secretary Kenneth Clarke has called for a ‘pause’ in prison population growth as the numbers creep closer to the UK’s operational capacity. At a hearing of the Commons Justice Committee last week Clarke described overcrowding in UK prisons as ‘one of the scourges of ...
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Red-tape bonfire plan for legal services bureaucracy
The government will today invite the legal profession to identify business-restricting regulations, naming three ‘sector champions’ as intermediaries. In the legal services stage of prime minister David Cameron’s ‘red tape challenge’ the Ministry of Justice has pinpointed more than 150 regulations suitable for scrutiny. Lawyers will ...
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Quiz your broker on fees, Society urges firms
The Law Society will today publish insurance guidance urging solicitors to exercise their rights and find out exactly what their broker is being paid. The 2012 PII Buyers’ Guide will help solicitors find out from their brokers all the fees and commissions they receive - as ...
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Former City partner gets three years for £1.3m fraud
A former Hogan Lovells partner has been jailed for three years after defrauding his firm of £1.3m. Christopher Grierson (pictured) was sentenced today at Southwark Crown Court after pleading guilty in March to four charges of false accounting. Grierson, who was dismissed by his firm in ...
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Call to halt referral fee ‘auctions’
A personal injury solicitor has accused insurance companies of ‘auctioning cases to the highest bidder’. John Spencer (pictured), director of Spencers Solicitors, said some insurers had conducted referral fee auctions amongst solicitors for bundles of cases. The price tag of these bundles was likely to be ...
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Eric Pickles, where are these Jubilee jobsworths?
Next week the nation will unite to celebrate the fact that an elderly woman isn’t dead yet. The Queen will reach her Diamond Jubilee, and as punishment she’ll have to suffer thousands of idiot well-wishers, the BBC disappearing up her backside and a concert featuring Ed ...
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Don’t rush into fee change, PI lawyers warn government
Personal injury lawyers have urged the government not to be rushed into radical changes to the low-value claims system. The government today closed its call for evidence and opinion on the future of the RTA Portal as it seeks to reduce the number of claims being ...
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Will-writing and property firms bring ABS total to seven
Two niche firms specialising in will-writing and property respectively have become the latest two organisations to be accepted as alternative business structures (ABSs). Parchment Group, based in Buckinghamshire, and three-partner firm Plainlaw, based in Oxfordshire, had their applications confirmed this week by the Solicitors Regulation Authority ...
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Insolvency exemption in latest no win, no fee U-turn
Insolvency cases will be exempt from no win, no fee reforms until April 2015, the government has revealed in its second climb-down in its struggle to overhaul the civil justice system. Justice minister Jonathan Djanogly said today that insolvency practitioners need longer to adjust to ...
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SRA defends trainee minimum salary cut
Scrapping the trainee minimum salary will increase, rather than hinder, diversity in the profession, a senior regulator has insisted. Samantha Barrass, executive director of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, was speaking after SRA board members voted to deregulate the minimum salary at their meeting last week. Following ...
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No win, no fee climb down: a case of double standards
Is the government losing its nerve on no win, no fee reforms? The overhaul of the civil justice system was supposed to have been rubber-stamped when the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act was given royal assent earlier this month.
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Regulators apply for ABS licence
Two aspiring regulators of the legal profession this week detailed their plans to be approved to license alternative business structures. The Intellectual Property Regulation Board (IPReg) said it expects a decision from the Legal Services Board on its application within a year. The Institute of Chartered ...
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Judicial diversity must start with lawyers, says Goldring
Senior judges will reach out to the legal profession by mentoring those who feel excluded from high office. Speaking at a conference yesterday, Senior Presiding Judge Lord Justice Goldring revealed members of the profession previously put off because of their gender, race or sexuality will be ...
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Social exclusivity ‘rife’ in profession
Social exclusivity is increasing in the legal profession, according to a new analysis of lawyers’ schooling published today. Legal recruiter Laurence Simons studied almost 50,000 professionals working in London using the networking site LinkedIn. It found that more than 15% of lawyers - more than 7,000 ...
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Trainee minimum abolition ‘will hit women’
Women will be disproportionately affected by the scrapping of the minimum salary for trainees, the Association of Women Solicitors (AWS) said today. The AWS has added its voice to mounting opposition to the decision taken last week by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. From August 2014, firms ...
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Trainee minimum dumped in 'partial deregulation'
Regulators have voted to partially deregulate the trainee solicitor minimum wage 30 years after it was introduced. The board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority made the decision to change the terms of the salary at its meeting today - with the change coming into effect in ...
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Sky targets new court filming rights
A TV executive campaigning to lift the ban on cameras in criminal courts has said the limited rights announced in last week’s Queen’s speech will not end the battle for access. ‘We’re obviously interested in discussing what extras we can do down the road,’ Simon Bucks, associate editor at Sky ...