All articles by Jonathan Rayner – Page 33
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News
Rioters and the quality of mercy
The spirit of forgiveness is abroad this September - but will it shine its light on the rioters who are appealing their ‘excessive’ sentences in the Court of Appeal? The spirit has already spun its benign magic on two crooks, letting them out of jail early, even though they had ...
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Internet policing is ‘inevitable’
State-imposed control of the internet is ‘inevitable’ if the conflict between the right to privacy and a free press is ever to be resolved, lawyers and journalists suggested last week at a Law Society public debate. They also warned that the current press regulator is toothless ...
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Lawyers slam ‘chaotic’ asylum unit
The UK’s system for registering asylum claims is chaotic and unworkable and urgently needs a root-and-branch overhaul, lawyers’ groups allege. Problems at the ‘Kafkaesque’ asylum screening unit in Croydon (pictured), the only such unit remaining after a similar unit in Liverpool closed in 2009, have ...
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Law firms sign up to equal pay reporting
National firm Eversheds (pictured) and northwest firm DWF have become the country’s first law firms to join a government scheme to publish gender equality data. News that the two firms have signed up to the Home Office’s Think, Act, Report scheme follows a Legal Services Board ...
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EU law education programme launched
Some 700,000 of the EU’s estimated 1.4 million lawyers, prosecutors and judges will have received a week’s formal training in EU law by 2020, the European Commission (EC) announced last week. The EC said in a press statement that the aim is to equip legal practitioners ...
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Junior lawyers slam college over training contracts
The Junior Lawyers Division has angrily rejected College of Law claims that there will soon be more training contract vacancies than Legal Practice Course graduates to fill them. The college has been accused of ‘spinning’ the figures to make it appear that securing a training contract ...
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Judicial appointments
Solicitors make first-rate judges. That is a bold statement, but it is one that Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) chair Christopher Stephens (pictured) stands by. He is ‘passionate’, he tells the Gazette, about seeing more solicitors securing a judicial role. The opportunities for solicitors are certainly there. ...
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Practising law in a ‘mafia state’
He practises law in a country that is said to be even more dangerous than Colombia. He has received death threats, someone tried to kill him by sabotaging his car and he fears for the lives of his wife and children. His ...
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UK ‘unattractive’ to foreign legal high-flyers
The government’s commitment to reducing net migration to the UK will do long-term damage to the competitiveness of UK law firms and inhibit their ability to develop business internationally, the Law Society’s immigration law committee (ILC) has warned. Law firms have told the ILC that, under ...
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Tragedy of council legal head ‘unable to cope’
A senior local authority solicitor committed suicide because he was unable to cope with the demands placed on him following a 30% cut to his department’s budget. In the wake of the tragedy, the chair of Solicitors in Local Government (SLG) has warned that redundancies in ...
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E-petition lodged calling for tighter tenant deposit protection
A solicitor has lodged an e-petition urging the government to strengthen the law protecting residential rent deposits paid by tenants to landlords. Tenancy deposit protection legislation, introduced by the Housing Act 2004, was designed to protect tenants against unscrupulous landlords who refused to return deposits at ...
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‘Solicitors from Hell’ owner gets bankruptcy order
The owner of the Solicitors from Hell website, Rick Kordowski, was made the subject of a bankruptcy order on 7 September 2011, the Gazette can confirm. The petition had been supported by a number of solicitors with damages and costs awards against him. In ...
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Record numbers of children subject to care applications
The numbers of children subject to applications to be taken into care climbed to record levels in 2011, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) announced today. Cafcass received 885 applications last month, the highest number ever received in August since it began ...
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Lawyers concerned over ABS impact, survey suggests
Solicitors expect a high number of law firm closures as a result of alternative business structures, research has suggested. A survey of 150 law firms by referral service Contact Law found that 36% thought one in five high street law firms will go out of business ...
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‘Self-employed’ solicitor sues law firm
A solicitor who unlawfully worked full-time for a law firm on a self-employed basis is entitled to the same legal protections as a salaried employee, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has ruled. The ruling overturned an earlier employment tribunal (ET) judgment that, because the contract between ...
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Firm denies claim of caste discrimination
A solicitor and her practice manager husband have brought the first employment tribunal case attempting to claim for wrongful dismissal on the grounds of caste discrimination. Amardeep Begraj, 33, and her husband Vijay, 32, who are of Indian descent, met while working at Coventry firm Heer ...
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Campaign against eviction of rioters
Some 2,000 people including a prominent human rights solicitor have joined a campaign to protest against the eviction of convicted rioters and their families from council housing, the Gazette has learned. The campaign’s supporters argue that evicting a rioter’s family is an unlawful collective punishment in ...
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Sole practitioners sound ABS ethics alarm
The Sole Practitioners Group is to launch a public relations campaign aimed at warning the public that profit-driven commercial organisations providing legal services may not offer the same high standard of ethics as law firms. The SPG will spend £15,000 on a three-month campaign to address ...
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What is the right punishment for child offenders?
The 11-year-old rioter sidles up beside you. ‘Pssst,’ he says, looking shifty. He indicates the bulge beneath his tracksuit top. ‘Wanna buy a waste paper basket?’ Yes, I know it’s no laughing matter. That child is a thief and, in this country at least, is ...
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International criminals targeting law firms, warns Soca
International criminals have launched a new fraud offensive on law firms’ client accounts, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) has warned. Soca issued a ‘red alert’ to the profession to warn of a trend in ‘advanced fee fraud’ targeting solicitors’ firms. It ...