Last 3 months headlines – Page 1234
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Trade union giant Thompsons is latest ABS
Trade union personal injury firm Thompsons has become one of the biggest practices yet to be licensed as an alternative business structure. The Solicitors Regulation Authority today confirmed the firm’s application had been successful, along with that of Thompsons-owned subsidiary firm BBH Legal. ...
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Family lawyers losing business
Could family lawyers be doing more to win business? The findings of a YouGov poll published last week to coincide with the government’s launch of a web app to provide advice to separating couples suggest they could. The survey showed that more than half (52%) of ...
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Agony aunt rescues app
When the Department for Work and Pensions unveiled its web app to help separating parents get advice without paying for pesky lawyers, it realised that the minister responsible, Steve Webb, was not an A-list draw. (No doubt he is famous in Thornbury & Yate.) Bravely, in the week of the ...
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Smaller law firms buck trend with income rise
Smaller legal firms have reported a rise in fee income despite the depressed economy – with residential conveyancing up in the usually weak third quarter of the calendar year. The second quarterly benchmarking survey from the Law Society’s Law Management Section shows a 7.4% increase in ...
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Family mediation scheme extended
Membership of the Law Society’s family mediation scheme will be extended to all qualified family mediators from April. Currently membership is restricted to solicitors and fellows of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives. From April, mediators competence-assessed by the Family Mediation Council will be able to ...
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Online advice: more out of less
An independent commission, launched on Monday, will look at how to develop strategies to cope with the impending cuts to public funding for legal aid. The chair of this commission, Lord Low, has been reported as saying that this will be about getting ‘more out of less’. ...
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ShelterBox Trust appeal
Can I make an unashamed plea to the Gazette’s readers? ShelterBox Trust is a substantial UK charity which delivers emergency shelter and basic utensils in times of disaster. In the last 10 years we have assisted more than 1.2 million people, saved countless numbers of lives and responded in over ...
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The SRA and referral fees
I attended the SRA's seminar on referral fees on 19 November. It was part of its consultation exercise on implementing the poisoned chalice of the ban on referral fees for personal injury cases. It was well attended and the SRA ought to take credit for listening to the worried and ...
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No legal aid cuts for social welfare appeals
The government suffered a rare ‘fatal defeat’ in the House of Lords last night on a regulation that would have denied legal help to people appealing welfare benefits on a point of law in first-tier tribunals. It also agreed to amend a regulation which opponents ...
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LSB ‘still needed’, government tells the Lords
The government has dismissed peers’ calls for the urgent scaling back of the Legal Services Board and described current arrangements as ‘fit for purpose’. Baroness Deech, chair of the Bar ...
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A professional lesson from Belarus
There is a country in Europe, bordered by three member states of the EU (Latvia, Lithuania and Poland), where lawyers suffer grievously for carrying out their professional duties - Belarus, often called Europe’s last dictatorship.
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Quindell snaps up law firm and claims manager in £60m deal
Fast-growing new legal entrant Quindell has announced a deal worth more than £60m to buy a leading claims management company and a law firm. AIM-listed Quindell Portfolio, which has already bought two law firms this year, today confirmed an agreement with Abstract Legal Holdings, the parent ...
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Portal and fixed fees – the consequences?
by Julie Carlisle, an associate at Henmans LLP Paul Evans of AXA tweeted recently in support of the government’s proposals for reduced portal and fixed fees: ‘Stripping out lawyers... obscene profits for whiplash claims will lead to lower premiums - good news for honest drivers.’
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Commission to probe impact of legal aid cuts
Campaigning charity the Legal Action Group has set up a commission to examine the impact of the legal aid cuts and develop a strategy to help ensure public access to justice. The Low Commission on the Future of Advice and Legal Support is chaired by crossbench ...
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Scottish society takes high road to ABS-style licensing
The Law Society of Scotland could license new legal businesses by spring after submitting its application to regulate the new entities. The society applied to the Scottish government to become an approved regulator of new licensed legal service providers (LPs), the Scottish equivalent of alternative business ...
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Bill would spare ‘innovative’ doctors from negligence risks
Conservative peer Lord Saatchi has introduced a bill that would exempt doctors from being held liable for clinical negligence if they ‘innovate’ during cancer treatment. Saatchi (pictured) brought forward the Medical Innovation Bill after his wife, the writer Josephine Hart, died from peritoneal cancer in June ...
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SRA awaiting 19,000 renewal applications with only two weeks to go
More than half the expected applications for practising certificate renewal are still to be received with just two weeks of the process remaining. The Solicitors Regulation Authority today revealed that more than 18,000 bulk or single applications are completed or nearing completion, out of an expected ...
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Danny Nightingale hysteria sets worrying precedent
No one could fail to be moved by the pictures of Danny Nightingale reunited with his family yesterday. Most happy of all, I suspect, were the tabloid newspapers who lapped up the story with relish and conveniently found a reason to relegate the Leveson report to the inside pages.