All articles by Jonathan Rayner – Page 29
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News
Rights commission in disarray following factional splits
Chaos reigns among the members of the commission set up by the prime minister to draft a replacement for the Human Rights Act (HRA), leaked emails and a resignation suggest. According to documents leaked to the press, one Tory member of the commission has accused the ...
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Subsidiarity and Gypsies
They are called didicoys or pikeys in Kent and they are the subject of an admonishing letter sent to the UK government by the Strasbourg court, which is again venturing into a part of the British psyche where even angels fear to tread. First the European ...
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Society slams tribunal fee plans
The Law Society has condemned as creating a barrier to justice government plans to introduce fees for taking claims to employment tribunals and employment appeals tribunals. The government is consulting on charging fees in order to transfer costs of running the employment tribunal system to ...
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Flexible working 'crucial for women lawyers'
Almost all women lawyers believe that flexible working practices are key to women winning senior roles in law firms, an international survey suggests. Some 85% of respondents to the survey, commissioned by LexisNexis and the Law Society, said that the level of commitment required to reach ...
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Clarke defends secret trials
Justice secretary Kenneth Clarke has defended plans to extend secret trials across a range of proceedings in the civil courts, arguing that a ‘unique and unprecedented’ terrorist threat means that evidence affecting national security can be safely disclosed only behind closed doors. A measure in the ...
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Salford claims centre plagued by complaints
Complaints continue to pour in about the new centralised facility for handling civil claims, with under two weeks to go before the centre is set to become fully operational. A solicitor told the Gazette he was still ‘reeling from the nightmare’ of dealing with the County ...
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News
Cash crisis could close half of CABs
Half of the 3,500 CAB advice centres run by the Citizens Advice charity could close as the government continues to squeeze legal aid and other sources of funding. News of the possible cull comes as the government prepares to give CAB extra work following its ‘bonfire of the quangos’. ...
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Law Society warns on skilled migration curbs
Further restrictions on businesses bringing non-EU skilled migrant workers into the UK could stall recovery when economic conditions improve, the Law Society has warned. Law firms need maximum flexibility to be able to recruit quickly when the need arises, it said. The Society said it agreed ...
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Sale reports ‘speculation’ says College of Law
The College of Law today dismissed as 'speculation' newspaper reports of its imminent sale to a private equity firm. According to The Sunday Times, the UK’s largest law school has accepted a £200m offer from Montagu Private Equity. News of a sale had been long ...
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Hope for rule of law in Malawi
I’d hoped that things might get better in Malawi when its diminutive, top-hat wearing, fly-whisk toting life president left the political stage in 1994. But I was wrong - in the second decade of the 21st century, the central African state still seems set on turning its back on the ...
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Troika bid to cut judicial holidays
The time-honoured tradition of two-month summer breaks for senior judges has become an unexpected frontline issue in international efforts to rescue troubled European economies, the Gazette has learned. The so-called troika, comprising the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission, has set fiscal and ...
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Government backs single EU patent court
The government has backed controversial plans to set up a single patent court for Europe. Lady Wilcox, minister at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, told a Lords committee this week that, even after 40 years of failed negotiations, the way forward for business efficiency in Europe remains a ...
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Over 50 law firms join breast implant action
A group action on behalf of the estimated 40,000 UK women who received cosmetic breast implants made by a now-defunct French company has signed up more than 50 law firms, in what could be the final group action of its kind. One of the lawyers ...
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Freshfields’ £10k bursary for underprivileged students
A magic circle firm is to offer students from less privileged backgrounds an annual bursary of £10,000 to finance their law degree studies. The scheme, which follows coalition social mobility adviser Alan Milburn’s calls for higher education to take greater account of candidates’ social backgrounds, will ...
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Ruling takes foreign lawyers further on passage to India
India’s much-vaunted ‘road map’ for the liberalisation of its £2.6bn legal services market has inched closer to reality following a high court ruling in a case concerning magic circle and international firms. In a ruling yesterday, the Chennai high court gave foreign firms the right to ...
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Junior staff forced upon 'life and death' care cases
The soaring number of court applications to take children into care is forcing cash-strapped law firms to use junior and unqualified staff to handle ‘life and death’ cases.
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Three kinds of 'liberty'
It’s been a fraught and, in one instance, poignantly tragic month for three detained individuals who gained their liberty. We have had ‘fanatical hate preacher’ Abu Qatada’s release from jail after almost a decade’s detention without charge.
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'Big conversation' needed on social networking
A US judge denied a lawyer continuance of trial after the latter’s Facebook entry revealed he was absent from court because he was out partying and had not suffered a bereavement as claimed, an International Bar Association (IBA) report on social networking recounts. Elsewhere, the Supreme ...
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Senior judge savages advocacy accreditation scheme
A senior judge has ridiculed the ‘steely gaze of the judicial viper’ that sits at the centre of the new ratings scheme for advocates. He called instead for ‘academies of advocacy’ in which judges, barristers and solicitors ‘enliven and encourage’ one another.
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Profits up in Scotland but small firms struggle
The Law Society of Scotland's annual Cost of Time survey has reported the first rise in profitability for law firms north of the border since 2008. Average profit per partner at Scottish firms totalled £71,000 in 2011, on a par with 2004 but well below the highs of 2005-08. ...