All articles by Jonathan Rayner – Page 23
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News
Eight days a week: a job description not a song
Lawyers and other legal professionals put in the equivalent of eight working days a week, a survey has revealed. And two-fifths of them feel more stressed by work than they did a year ago. In a survey of more than 2,000 British employees, international recruiter Randstad ...
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Brady advocate bailed following TV revelations
Police have arrested the mental health advocate of Moors murderer Ian Brady following her disclosure that he gave her a letter that may reveal the whereabouts of a child’s body missing since 1964. Jackie Powell, 49, was arrested this morning on suspicion of preventing the burial ...
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Death threats by text
The death threat had been sent by text to the mobile telephone of a lawyer in Colombia. Translated from the Spanish and sanitised for the firewalls, it said: ‘Hi, b*stard dogs. You have already done your bit, now it’s our turn. Get all those b*stards together for your and your ...
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High court declines JR of assisted suicide law
The High Court has told two men suffering from ‘locked-in syndrome’ that their legal challenges to the ban on voluntary euthanasia have been rejected. In judgment today, the court said that it recognised that the men’s cases raised difficult ethical, social and legal issues, and expressed ...
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Surge in demand for law degrees as A-level pupils get results
Two privately owned law schools have bucked the UK-wide trend of fewer students applying for university places by reporting a ‘surge in applications’ for their LL.B law degree courses. Meanwhile, as 335,000 pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland receive their A-level results today, the Joint ...
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Disability pioneer Morris dies at 84
The campaigner who almost single-handedly made it a duty of local authorities to assist disabled people with a range of free services has died aged 84. Lord Morris of Manchester (Alf Morris) was a Labour MP under prime minister Harold Wilson when in 1970, in the ...
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Law Commission takes aim at multiple wildlife statutes
Wildlife law could be modernised to balance the conflicting priorities of managing wildlife for sport with protecting and conserving it under Law Commission proposals published today. The aim is to simplify the current legal framework, which includes statues dating back to the 1831 Game Act, ...
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Society slams ‘flawed’ logic on harassment liability plan
The Law Society has criticised the ‘fundamentally flawed’ logic behind government plans to scrap an employer’s liability for a third party’s harassment of an employee. The plan, set out in a Government Equalities Office consultation which closed on 7 August, argues that such liability is an ...
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Can a court still be scandalised?
Scandalising the court. The phrase summons images of swooning judges, wigs askew, smelling salts wafted beneath judicial nostrils. Which is nonsense, really, because judges, perhaps more than any of us, have seen and heard it all. They are just not the swooning sort.
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Solicitors shun training review
Solicitors submitted a ‘disappointingly low’ one-eighth of the almost 1,000 completed Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) surveys so far received by the review’s research team. In contrast, barristers make up almost two-fifths of the responses.
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New patron of legal diversity trust
Conservative life peer Baroness Sandip Verma of Leicester has become patron of the BLD Foundation, a group that works to improve diversity and social mobility in the legal profession. The BLD (formerly Black Lawyers Directory) Foundation provides young people with access to an array of ...
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Professor Gus John to carry out SRA racism review
Professor Gus John is to carry out an independent comparative case review to determine if there is any evidence of racism in the way the Solicitors Regulation Authority investigates black and minority ethnic (BME) solicitors.
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News
Partners block promotion prospects
One in three solicitors in private practice blames their ‘stifled’ career progression on increased competition from their peers combined with fewer partners retiring, a survey has revealed. The survey of more than 200 private practice solicitors, published today by recruiters Laurence Simons, quoted Law Society ...
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Government wrong to make graduate stack shelves, High Court rules
The government was wrong to require a graduate to leave her internship in a museum to stack shelves in a high street shop, a high court judge ruled today. However, the government had not breached her human right to protection from slavery and forced labour, the ...
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SRA licenses 15th ABS
Seven-partner Gloucestershire high street firm Langley Wellington has become the 15th alternative business structure to be licensed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority since licensing began in March 2012. It joins firms ranging in size from Kent sole practitioner Lawbridge to Co-operative Legal Services, with plans to ...
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New ABSs critical of application process
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has too few resources to handle the licensing of alternative business structures (ABSs) and should ‘triple in size or work 24 hours a day,’ the senior partner of one of the four firms licensed this week told the Gazette. The four new ...
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Immigration red tape deters investors
A stream of ‘excessive and onerous’ restrictions on immigration risks making the UK an unattractive destination for overseas investors, lawyers have warned.
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News
LSC to face judicial review over report costs
The Law Society is to challenge by judicial review a Legal Services Commission decision to meet just one-third of the costs of an expert witness report ordered by a county court on behalf of a child. The LSC declined to pay the full costs of the ...
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News
Being British and a ‘good sport’ - the story of ‘Sport and the Law’
It is a sepia photograph and the four young women are posed in modest shift-like swimming costumers, homemade union jacks hand-sewn to their fronts. A fully clothed, stern-faced woman - trainer or chaperone? - is there in the photo with them. She is staring away from the camera lens, her ...
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'Disproportionate intervention targets BME solicitors'
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) continues to target black and minority ethnic (BME) solicitors disproportionately for intervention, figures released earlier this week revealed.