All articles by Jonathan Rayner – Page 51
-
News
Law firms must do better for returning mums
Somehow you expect better from law firms – they can’t plead ignorance of employment law, after all – but it turns out that they can be just as bad as other employers when it comes to maternity rights.
-
News
African lawyers complete training at top City firms
Ten leading African lawyers completed a three-month training and relationship-building programme at top City firms this week, in a scheme designed to improve UK links at a time when there is high demand for English-qualified lawyers on the African continent. The International Lawyers for Africa (ILFA) ...
-
News
Litigation can cost more than just legal fees
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has become the latest corporation to toss the remnants of its reputation on to the scrapheap of litigation.
-
News
Lawyers praise ‘brave new world’ for mental health
Mental health lawyers have welcomed the publication of a government plan to support people with mental health problems in the criminal justice system. The government published its five-year delivery plan last week for implementing the Bradley Report’s 82 recommendations for improving the way people with mental ...
-
News
Who is really writing this blog?
All the other bloggers are revealing their true identities, so why shouldn’t I? Here goes: I only pretend to be a journalist working on the Gazette. All that stuff I write about employment law and personal injury and mental health and lawyers in local government. It’s not the real me.
-
News
Whistleblowing proposals could give ‘improper bargaining power’ to claimants
Government proposals on whistleblowing could give ‘improper bargaining power’ to claimants and allow serious allegations to escape investigation, employment lawyers have warned. Under proposals contained in a Department for Business Innovation & Skills consultation, whistleblowing claimants would be able to decide whether the employment tribunal should ...
-
News
Unpaid volunteers not covered by discrimination legislation
Volunteers who give their time unpaid to charities are not covered by domestic or European equal treatment legislation designed to protect employees, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has ruled. The ruling arose from a claim brought by a citizens advice bureau volunteer who alleged she had ...
-
News
Diary of a redundancy – an epilogue
One month into your new job at the legal advice centre and you’re still behaving too much like a lawyer. Or so, knuckles sharply rapped, you’ve been told.
-
News
Diary of a redundancy (part three)
You punch in the number of the charity. ‘It’s a kind offer,’ you say into the telephone, and then hesitate. The charity has offered you a job as an adviser. The money is a third of what you were pulling in as a proper solicitor before those born-out-of-wedlock partners made ...
-
News
Lord Woolf raps solicitors for CPR failings
Lord Woolf (pictured) has blamed lawyers, the judiciary and government for blunting the impact of his 10-year-old reforms to the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR). The retired law lord, addressing members of the London Solicitors Litigation Association last week, said lawyers had ‘made an industry’ of some ...
-
News
Insurers plan advertising campaign for personal injury claims
A number of insurers are gearing up to launch advertising campaigns to persuade personal injury claimants in motor accidents to bypass solicitors and deal directly with the responsible party’s insurer, it is believed. The news comes as the Financial Services Authority confirmed that it does not ...
-
News
Surge in unfair dismissal claims puts tribunals under strain
Lawyers are witnessing a huge surge in unfair dismissal claims which is leading them to expand their employment teams but is also placing a severe strain on the tribunal system. Figures released by the Tribunals Service last week showed that unfair dismissal claims rose 29% to ...
-
News
Mental illness – a death sentence in China
Acupuncture and herbal remedies – that’s what Chinese medicine means to most of us. But now the Beijing government has come up with a new form of medication. It’s a cure for bipolar disorder, it’s permanent and it takes just seconds to administer.
-
News
Joint LA panel to save £1.5m
Six London boroughs have combined to slash almost £1.5m a year in legal fees. The London Boroughs Legal Alliance, which links lawyers from Harrow, Hammersmith & Fulham, Camden, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Kensington & Chelsea councils, aims to save £1.44m through a pioneering collaboration.
-
News
London and the south-east are learning from the lessons of the downturn
Money is still being made in London and its environs, with a recent bellwether survey suggesting that large law firms – of which the region has more than its fair share – are ‘over the worst’.
-
News
Law firm wins injunction against departing solicitor
Law firms can obtain a ‘springboard’ injunction to prevent solicitors from taking clients with them if they leave suddenly, a High Court decision has indicated – even if their employment contract does not expressly forbid taking clients.
-
News
London councils slash £1.5m in legal spend
Six London boroughs have joined together to slash almost £1.5m a year in legal fees. The London Boroughs Legal Alliance (LBLA), which links lawyers from Harrow, Hammersmith & Fulham, Camden, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Kensington & Chelsea borough councils, aims to save £1.44m a year by using ...
-
News
Free Roman Polanski – now!
Doesn’t your heart go out to film director Roman Polanski? He was arrested in Switzerland last week and yet all the poor guy had done, according to the 1977 charges against him, was sodomise a 13-year-old girl and force her to engage in ‘oral copulation’.
-
News
Duty calls: the hard and sometimes demanding and thankless role of a duty solicitor
The duty solicitor I’m shadowing negotiates electronically controlled gates under the unblinking gaze of CCTV cameras. He arrives at a windowless room beneath the court, where the table and seats are bolted to the floor and there is a glass viewing port in the heavy wooden door. A guard from ...
-
News
Hike in TUPE litigation claims against law firms
The number of law firms facing litigation under Transfer of Undertakings, Protection of Employment (TUPE) regulations has risen sharply, the Gazette has learned. Gordon Turner (pictured), employment specialist at London firm Partners Law, said he has acted on nine cases where law firms have been ...