All articles by Jonathan Rayner – Page 22
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‘Phenomenal growth’ in power of attorney registrations
Lasting powers of attorney (LPA) registrations have more than trebled over the past three years to reach 210,000 a year – a £42m market for solicitors, the Public Guardian revealed this week.
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UN call for ‘gender approach’ to bench
Countries worldwide should adopt a ‘gender-oriented approach’ to ensure women have the same rights and opportunities as men to hold high judicial office, the UN’s human rights council special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers told the Gazette this week.
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Law firms blamed for claim delays
Law firms are delaying the processing of thousands of claims at the new centralised facility in Salford by stopping cheques and sending duplicate documents, the centre has complained. In the six months to 7 September, firms stopped 872 cheques, worth £167,140, that they had sent to ...
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Black History Month set to launch
Law firms seeking to grow their business in emerging markets should ‘tap into the cultural acumen’ of the UK’s black and minority ethnic (BAME) communities, the organisers of a month-long event to celebrate black achievement said today. The Law Society’s Black History Month starts on 3 ...
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Whose justice system is Europe’s best?
There are legions of fat-cat legal aid lawyers living off the cream of the land in Britain, or so certain newspapers have been telling us for years. And those papers may be right: as recently as 2010 the UK genuinely did pay out more in legal aid than any other ...
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Judicial appointment reforms ‘sideline’ Wales
Coalition plans to abolish permanent Welsh representation in the judicial appointments process will lead to an even more ‘England-centric judiciary’, Wales’ top lawyer has warned. The government proposes scrapping the requirement for a Welsh commissioner on the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) as part of a drive ...
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SRA planning surprise diversity swoops
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to make unannounced visits to 100 ‘randomly selected’ law firms to assess their compliance with mandatory diversity reporting requirements. The plan, announced at a Law Society Firms Diversity Forum meeting in Manchester last week, ‘went down like a lead balloon’, according ...
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Council lawyers warn of red tape bind
New rules on transparency could leave councils tied up in red tape and ‘swamped by minutiae’, senior legal officers have warned. The new rules will create a ‘huge and unsustainable bureaucratic burden’ and tie up local government in the very red tape that it is ...
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Colombia's continuing struggles - The Colombia Caravana 2012
She was a lawyer and they dismembered her alive. When the Colombian police found her body, they mistook it for a dog that had been repeatedly run over. It was her 12-year-old son who was called upon to identify her. Witnesses at the trial of ...
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Colombian lawyers ‘still at risk’
The prospect of talks to try to resolve Latin America’s longest civil war has not lifted the threat of unlawful detention, assault and murder facing human rights lawyers in Colombia, a visit by an international legal charity has heard. Between 7 August 2010 and 31 ...
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Council lawyers create first-time buyer boost
A local authority has launched a £12m scheme to revive the housing market by giving first-time buyers an affordable way to take out mortgages of up to £350,000. The scheme, drafted by Kent County Council’s (KCC) legal team, is designed to help hundreds of first-time buyers purchase homes with a ...
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Manchester firms rebel against weekend courts
Manchester law firms are refusing to ask staff to attend magistrates’ courts at weekends because they say to do so would require a unilateral change to contracts of employment and invite claims of unfair dismissal. The firms say that some staff could claim constructive dismissal on ...
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Expert report calls for more action on people trafficking
A ‘significant number’ of child victims of human trafficking go missing from UK local authority care and back into the hands of people smugglers, a report published this week warns. The report, compiled by the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in ...
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Secret courts 'will conceal UK complicity in torture'
The UN special rapporteur on torture has said that so-called ‘secret courts’ could be used to suppress evidence of British collusion in torture. Professor Juan Mendez, speaking at the thinktank Chatham House on 10 September, became the latest high-profile figure to criticise UK government plans - ...
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Nicklinson widow launches article 8 appeal
The widow of locked-in syndrome victim Tony Nicklinson is to pursue the appeal that her late husband would have brought if he was still alive, it emerged today. Nicklinson failed to convince the High Court in mid-August that friends and doctors should be allowed to help ...
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Consumers may sue traders before national courts
European Union (EU) consumers may bring proceedings before the courts in their own member state against traders in other member states even if they had visited the trader to conclude the contract, the EU’s top court has ruled. The ruling takes into account a 2002 amendment ...
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‘Cutting edge’ approach to ethics needed - LSB
Proposals to monitor ethics across an increasingly diverse legal services market are set out by the Legal Services Board (LSB) today. Its report says that ensuring the integrity of the profession in this way is central to maintaining public confidence in the rule of law.
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Death of a Colombian family
First they killed Omairi's daughter. The paramilitaries meant to kill her husband, a journalist who was exposing corruption in Colombia, South America. They bungled the assassination and he survived, but their daughter died. That was 22 April 2004, their daughter's twentieth birthday. More than eight years later, just one person ...
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Snooping bill ‘not thought through’
Proposals in draft legislation would let the government conduct the ‘mass surveillance of innocent people’ under the cloak of investigating terrorist and criminal organisations, the Law Society has claimed.
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Systemic cruelty inflicted on young refugees
Kids, who’d have ‘em? Not the British, by all accounts. We would rather pay more for our airfares, apparently, than risk the irritation of the child in front of us leaning back in his or her seat during a flight. What’s more, their GCSEs are easier than the ones we ...