All articles by Jonathan Rayner – Page 34
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News
Will-writing fraudster jailed
An unregulated will-writer has been jailed for 14 months after fraudulently charging 130 clients between £30 and £60 to fix a non-existent problem with their wills. Berkshire resident Walter Ventriglia, 47, was running a will-writing firm called Legacy & Law. He wrote to the clients, under ...
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News
Irish firm achieves Lexcel status
An Irish law firm has become only the third outside England and Wales to secure the Law Society’s Lexcel practice management accreditation. Dublin firm O’Rourke Reid joins Polish firm TGC Corporate Lawyers and Scottish firm McClure Naismith among those to have passed the assessment process required ...
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News
Pro-bono project takes foothold in India
Former UK attorney general Lord Goldsmith has moderated a roundtable for eleven of India’s leading law firms to discuss how to develop a pro bono culture. The roundtable, the first of its kind in India, was co-hosted by UK-based i-Probono, a non-profit organisation that connects ...
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Eviction of rioters
Question: What’s the difference between having a child who is a mass murderer and a child who is a rioter? Answer: A roof over your head. That’s because sharing a home with a mass murderer won’t get you and the rest of ...
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News
500th law firm secures Conveyancing Quality Scheme status
Five hundred law firms have now secured accreditation to the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS), the Society said today. Essex firm Todmans SRE was the latest to receive the CQS mark of excellence in residential conveyancing practice. Since CQS launched ...
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News
News focus: Fast-track justice and the riots
Lawyers have recounted extraordinary scenes both of chaos and professional dedication over the past 10 days, as defence solicitors, prosecutors, magistrates and court staff worked through the night to deal with the unprecedented number of people arrested in the wake of last week’s riots across England. ...
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News
Yorkshire councils combine legal teams
Five West Yorkshire councils have combined their legal teams in an attempt to maximise resources and save around £1.6m a year in legal spend. The legal teams at Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield councils have come together to form WYLAW, an umbrella group that will ...
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News
Riots: glut of appeals anticipated
Crown courts could face a glut of appeals in response to the speed at which defendants were dealt with last week, when some magistrates’ courts worked through the night to process defendants. Criminal defence lawyers told the Gazette that the swift dispatch with which cases were ...
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News
Advocacy assurance scheme is ‘bar-centric’, solicitor claims
A significant number of solicitor advocates will not qualify for higher rights advocacy under a proposed ‘bar-centric’ Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA), the chair of the Solicitors Association of Higher Court Advocates (SAHCA) has claimed. SAHCA chairman Jo Cooper said that advocacy regulator the Joint ...
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News
Solicitors report ‘chaotic scenes’ as rioters processed through court
Defence solicitors and prosecutors have reported scenes of chaos as they worked day and night to represent or prosecute more than 1,000 alleged rioters and looters arrested so far this week. Magistrates’ courts in London and other cities across England have been sitting 24 hours a ...
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News
Society to set up pro bono riot helpline for victims
The Law Society is to launch a telephone helpline next week which will direct small independent shopkeepers and other victims of the recent riots to pro bono legal advice. The Society will be working in collaboration with participating law firms and pro bono legal advice charity ...
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News
Marsh launches PII service targeted at small firms
Insurance broker Marsh has launched a new service targeted at providing professional indemnity insurance (PII) for smaller firms. Marsh said its service would offer two to three-partner firms exclusive access to Liberty Mutual Insurance Europe, while four to 10-partner firms would have exclusive access to XL ...
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News
Society welcomes amendment to Localism Bill
The government has amended the Localism Bill, following Law Society warnings that a certain provision could have caused uncertainty in the property market. The provision proposed strengthening local authorities’ powers to tackle abuses of the planning system where there had been a breach of planning control ...
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News
Chartis will not offer new PII business
Insurer Chartis has said that it will not take on any new business in the solicitors’ professional indemnity insurance (PII) market due to the high costs of the Assigned Risks Pool. The insurer said it will concentrate on renewals within its existing book instead. ...
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News
Tottenham law firm damaged by fire
The Tottenham offices of London firm EBR Attridge have been damaged by fire during last weekend’s riots. In a statement issued through the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the firm said that despite suffering smoke damage, most files remain intact and are being ‘reassembled’. ...
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News
Cardiff Law School launches GDL conversion course
Cardiff Law School is to add the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) conversion course to its portfolio of legal training courses from September 2012. The law school said that that the GDL scheme, which enables non-law graduates to train for a career in law, has become ...
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News
SPs eligible to become Judicial Appointments Commissioners
Sole practitioners are eligible to apply for a position as a Judicial Appointments Commissioner, the recruitment agency acting for the Ministry of Justice has confirmed, despite confusion over the wording of the job specification. The specification for the role states that candidates seeking to become a ...
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News
Report highlights dire plight of Syrian lawyers
Human rights lawyers in Syria suffer surveillance and harassment by security officials, and are banned from holding meetings or travelling abroad, according to a report by the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI). The report said the international community had ‘great concerns’ over the treatment ...
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News
One in three law centres set to shut down
At least a third of law centres will close if government plans to cut legal aid funding go ahead this autumn, solicitors have predicted. The warning came after the UK’s largest not-for-profit social welfare law firm, Law for All, went into administration, weeks after the Immigration ...
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News
Human rights breakthrough in Mexico
Mexico’s Supreme Court has ruled that military personnel accused of human rights violations against lawyers and others should be tried in civilian courts instead of military courts, where violations have historically gone unpunished. The ruling follows the publication in March of a Law Society human rights ...