Last 3 months headlines – Page 1453
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News
Has the time come for a contingency legal aid fund?
The idea of CLAF (or contingency legal aid fund) is either a brilliant notion that has never had its day or an unworkable one that should have been put out of its misery years back. It has been knocking around the legal policy world since ...
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Land Registry drops e-transfer move
The Land Registry has shelved plans to introduce electronic transfers with e-signatures, and written off nearly £11m spent developing the scheme. The Registry’s annual report, published last week, showed that it is writing off £6.4m spent developing electronic charges, signatures and transfers, and a further £4.5m ...
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Thousands of Crown court trials are 'ineffective'
Defence and prosecution lawyers are to blame for more than a third of ‘ineffective’ trials in the Crown court, according to data published by the Ministry of Justice. The Judicial and Court Statistics 2010 show that, of the 977,000 ...
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High Court backs children's guardian independence
A High Court ruling has reasserted the independence of children’s guardians from state control. In a landmark judgment, Sir Nicholas Wall said the court-appointed guardians were a vital element in protecting children. He told the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support ...
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Insurance lawyers call for lower fixed-fee rates
Insurance lawyers are pressing the Ministry of Justice to reduce the fixed-fee rates payable to claimant lawyers under the Road Traffic Accident portal. Responding to a government consultation on speeding up county court cases, which closed last week, the Forum of Insurance Lawyers said the ...
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Leading insurance broker predicts late entries in indemnity market
A leading insurance broker has predicted that there may still be late entrants to the solicitors’ professional indemnity market. Martin Ellis, director of Prime Professions, told the Gazette that some insurers had been interested in opening books for law firms until very recently. ...
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Solicitor wins right to bring age bias claim against law firm
A solicitor dismissed for failing to meet billing targets has won the right to bring an age discrimination claim against his former employer. However, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) struck out his race and sex discrimination claims. Samarasingher Methuen began working for ...
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The rights of EU citizens cannot be divorced from the duties that accompany them
I read Jonathan Goldsmith’s article about the growing number of ‘rights’ with interest. Can I ask what has happened to a person’s responsibilities, which is the other side of the coin? If EU citizens expect their rights to be honoured, ...
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Insurer confusion
The tedious discussions regarding whether referral fees are right in principle or unacceptably distort the market will undoubtedly continue ad nauseam. The views of the various parties are so entrenched that it seems unlikely an acceptable common ground will ever be reached. If the situation ...
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News
Extradition bias
Joshua Rozenberg appears not to have read the extradition treaty between the UK and US. He endorses the contention of Amy Jeffress, US department of justice attaché to the American Embassy in London, that the treaty is balanced by stating that the UK can demand ...
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A man of Straw
As personal injury lawyers, we think it is a great shame and totally unfair that so many lawyers are criticising Jack Straw for discovering the existence of referral fees in 2011. After all, why should we expect the former justice secretary to be aware that ...
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News
City firm slams Border Agency
City firm Penningtons has accused officials at the UK Border Agency (UKBA) of threatening its clients and breaking the Civil Service Code, as the government seeks to meet its commitment to reduce UK net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’. The complaints relate to action ...
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Society protests against treatment of Chinese lawyers
The Law Society is to take part in a ‘mass intervention’ to protest at the maltreatment of human rights lawyers in China, after an Amnesty International report published last week revealed that the Beijing government has intensified its clampdown on their work. The report said the ...
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Solicitor denies legal aid fraud charges
A criminal defence solicitor accused of defrauding the legal aid fund along with two business associates this week told the court that he did not know ‘how all this has happened’. Solicitor Reuben Ewujowoh (pictured), 44, principal at Rae & Co in Southwark, London, and ...
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NHS 'above the law' in legal aid reforms
The government is putting the NHS ‘above the law’ with its proposed legal aid reforms and changes to the ‘no win, no fee’ arrangements, the Gazette has been told. Paul Rumley, clinical negligence partner at Withy King’s Swindon office, said the legal aid cuts and reform ...
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Lawyers march for London Pride 2011
More than 100 lawyers marched in support of London Pride 2011 last week. Members of the Law Society, Bar Council, Institute of Legal Executives, Junior Lawyers Division, Bar Lesbian and Gay Group, Lesbian and Gay Lawyers Association and InterLaw Diversity Forum marched together under the ...
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Government must be persuaded to value legal profession
This is my last president’s podium. In June, I looked back over the year and selected what I felt were some of the Law Society’s key achievements. Now I want to look forward and give my personal perspective on the ...
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Lord Justice Jackson’s reforms will hurt the most vulnerable
by Nigel Muers-Raby, chairman of the Consumer Justice Alliance Lord Justice Jackson’s ill-conceived proposals for the reform of civil litigation have commenced their journey through parliament.
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Solicitors and others remain divided over desirability of the government’s civil justice reforms
In The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, the government conceded remarkably little following extensive - though hardly protracted - periods of consultation. As reported in the Gazette, 5,000 submissions on the legal aid proposals made hardly any difference to the bill’s contents. ...
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The News of The World’s attack on lawyers in the Bellfield case is breathtaking
The alleged hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone by the News of the World is a story that has shocked many journalists; and we tend to be pretty hard-boiled. Appallingly, it seems that journalists from that paper deleted messages in the days after Milly’s disappearance, raising ...