Last 3 months headlines – Page 1273
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ABSs: a veritable ‘who’s that?’
Watching the trickle of new alternative business structure licence announcements has been like the opening night of Celebrity Big Brother. We’ve had a couple of famous faces we knew about in advance and a few surprises, but mostly it’s been a case of running to Google to find out who ...
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Davies gets three more years at consumer panel
The Legal Services Board (LSB) today announced the re-appointment of Elisabeth Davies (pictured) as chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel. Davies’s new appointment runs from 1 August 2012 to 31 March 2015. She has been interim chair following the resignation last year of Lady Hayter.
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Happy with McNally
Did the fight to protect legal aid from the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act get under the skin of Liberal Democrat rank and file? Or are the party’s activists just quick to forgive? Obiter wonders. ...
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Lawyers and the 1960s
I am in the US, and as I move around places to stay, I read whatever previous holidaymakers have left behind in our apartment. It makes for variety and unexpected choices. In our current accommodation, there is a book called Boom! by Tom Brokaw, which is described as ‘Voices of ...
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Irwin Mitchell shows a flush of ABS licences
National firm Irwin Mitchell has today become the first multi-licensed alternative business structure, with five licences covering a range of its business operations.
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We’ll publish all on complaints, LeO states
The Legal Ombudsman has reaffirmed its commitment to making public complaints data about lawyers and firms despite a delay in publication. Chief Ombudsman Adam Sampson (pictured) said the first quarter’s data – including around 900 decisions – will be published ‘sometime in the autumn’.
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It is often the hardest cases that are sent for mediation
It is a common (mis)conception that litigation and delay go hand in glove. Defendants perceive claimants as averse to settlement because they want to 'costs build'; claimants perceive insurers as averse to settlement because they want to retain their funds as long as possible. Both suggest that delays in the ...
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MoJ improving – but financial performance ‘unacceptable’, MPs say
The Ministry of Justice is blighted by poor financial management and a lack of expertise for drawing up outsourcing contracts, a select committee states today. A report by the Justice Select Committee says while improvements had been made in structure in the five years since the ...
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Brady advocate bailed following TV revelations
Police have arrested the mental health advocate of Moors murderer Ian Brady following her disclosure that he gave her a letter that may reveal the whereabouts of a child’s body missing since 1964. Jackie Powell, 49, was arrested this morning on suspicion of preventing the burial ...
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American bar closes door on 'lowest common denominator' ABSs
Leading US lawyers have voted down a proposal to rule out all further studies on non-lawyer ownership of firms – while indicating that alternative business structure (ABS) arrangements remain firmly off the agenda for now.
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Dog day resolutions
Welcome to the silly season. Charles Dickens once observed: ‘It is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane. The good ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing clippers, are laid up in ordinary. The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of ...
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Title fraud
The Land Registry (LR) claims that property worth an estimated £50m has been ‘saved’ by its fraud prevention measures (see Fighting Fraud). An achievement, indeed, but one for which any tendency to self-congratulate should be tempered by the less flattering statistic that within the space of two years LR’s provision ...
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Surge in demand for law degrees as A-level pupils get results
Two privately owned law schools have bucked the UK-wide trend of fewer students applying for university places by reporting a ‘surge in applications’ for their LL.B law degree courses. Meanwhile, as 335,000 pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland receive their A-level results today, the Joint ...
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Clarke looks again at discount rate deductions
Justice secretary Kenneth Clarke has opened talks with the personal injury sector amidst concerns that claimants are missing out on their rightful compensation. Clarke and his equivalents in Scotland and Northern Ireland are looking again at the discount rate; the amount deducted from settlements on the ...
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Death threats by text
The death threat had been sent by text to the mobile telephone of a lawyer in Colombia. Translated from the Spanish and sanitised for the firewalls, it said: ‘Hi, b*stard dogs. You have already done your bit, now it’s our turn. Get all those b*stards together for your and your ...
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High court declines JR of assisted suicide law
The High Court has told two men suffering from ‘locked-in syndrome’ that their legal challenges to the ban on voluntary euthanasia have been rejected. In judgment today, the court said that it recognised that the men’s cases raised difficult ethical, social and legal issues, and expressed ...
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Only parliament can help Tony Nicklinson
If Tony Nicklinson had the ability, he would take his own life. The father-of-two says his current existence, paralysed from the neck down and communicating through blinking, is intolerable. Without the physical capability, he will need someone to assist him, but the law will not grant ...
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Disability pioneer Morris dies at 84
The campaigner who almost single-handedly made it a duty of local authorities to assist disabled people with a range of free services has died aged 84. Lord Morris of Manchester (Alf Morris) was a Labour MP under prime minister Harold Wilson when in 1970, in the ...
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If you can’t do, learn
Have you ever wondered how a lawyer who practises in, say, commercial law would ever be able to help an individual with the sorts of legal issues encountered by someone with sufficiently limited means to qualify for pro bono assistance? At LawWorks we do, in fact, ...
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LSB confirms PC fee rises
The Legal Services Board today confirmed its acceptance of higher practising certificate fees for 2013, as agreed by the Law Society’s Council in early July. The practising certificate (PC) fee for 2013 will increase by 5%, from £328 to £344, following a reduction of 23% from 2011 to 2012. ...