Last 3 months headlines – Page 1531
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Matters of fact about recent mental health tender
Recent negative comments in the Gazette about the results of the Legal Services Commission’s mental health tender ignore a number of key points. The tender process itself was a success. The LSC actually allocated 1,500 more new matter starts than in 2009/10, and the allocations we ...
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Does the UK need a comprehensive constitutional framework?
This week’s announcement of a referendum on whether MPs should be elected under the alternative vote system is the latest example of Britain’s piecemeal approach to constitutional reform. Surely we should step back and take a broader view of how we govern the UK?
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Surprise appointments
Many lawyers shared the surprise of Conservative MPs Dominic Grieve and Henry Bellingham when David Cameron gave neither a position in the Ministry of Justice in May. The legal profession had spent the last 12 months schmoozing the pair, who were widely expected to become justice secretary and legal aid ...
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Pad on the back
Anyone played with an iPad yet? Obiter had one thrust into his palms by a beaming chum only last week, but embarrassingly mistook it for an oversized iPhone (‘Where’s the earpiece’ rather gave the game away).
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Jockeying for position
What with the World Cup, Wimbledon and the Tour de France, cricket and the Open golf, watching sports could become a full-time occupation. But one lawyer in the equine team at northern firm Langleys has gone a step further than being just an armchair spectator. Private client assistant Serena Brotherton ...
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Marching with pride
Lawyers were out in force last weekend for the Pride 2010 parade in central London celebrating ‘equality under the law’. Some 120 solicitors, barristers and legal executives braved the heat to join the lawyers’ contingent, which saw the Law Society, the Bar Council, the Junior Lawyers Division, the Lesbian and ...
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Taking the law into your own hands
For anyone who has ever started a sentence with ‘If I were running the country…’, the launch of Nick Clegg’s ‘Your freedom’ website last week must have been manna from heaven. The site gives Joe Public a forum for suggesting ideas for how Nick (pictured) and Dave should ‘redress the ...
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Criminal law - procedural amendments
On 5 April 2010, the Criminal Procedure Rules were consolidated into a new edition, but the opportunity was also taken to make a series of amendments. Part 29 now provides for special measures to assist defendants in relation to witness anonymity orders.
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Employment
Administrative law – Health – Compensation – Compensation agreements Rose Gibb v Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justices Laws, Sedley, Rimer): 23 June 2010 The ...
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Human rights
Pensions – Discrimination – Gender reassignment – Retirement age Christine Jennifer Timbrell v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justices Thorpe, Moore-Bick, Aikens): 22 June 2010 ...
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Landlord and tenant
Local government – Date of termination – Death – Tolerated trespass Austin (FC) (appellant) v Southwark London Borough Council (respondent): SC (Lords Hope, Walker, Brown, Kerr, Lady Hale): 23 June 2010 ...
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Criminal law
Businesses – Commercial offences – False descriptions – Labelling R v Elizabeth Lee: CA (Crim Div) (Lord Justice Aikens, Mr Justice Royce, Judge Radford (Recorder of Redbridge)): 24 June 2010 ...
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Social security
Education – Carer's allowance – Courses – Full-time students Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v Amanda Deane: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justices Ward, Hughes, Lady Justice Hallett): 23 June 2010 ...
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Cutting-edge technology is transforming the way solicitors work
There are too many heavyweight topics upon which one might opine today: reviews of family and criminal justice, to name but two. We crave your indulgence therefore to comment instead upon something less momentous but, in its own way, no less diverting. That is the ...
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Legal ombudsman will take non-legal approach to complaints handling
by Adam Sampsonchief legal ombudsman for the new complaints-handling scheme In all the speculation about the consequences of a new government and its approach to managing the nation’s budget deficit, we all anticipated a period of review and reflection. Some of the certainties of the previous ...
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'Typical' PC fee set to fall
Practising fees will fall by more than a quarter in 2010/11 for the ‘typical’ fee-payer, if proposals submitted to the Law Society Council are approved next week. October will see the introduction of the so-called ‘fairer fees’ regime, under which 40% of the cost of ...
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Call for 'international convention’ on parent relocation
A senior Court of Appeal judge has called for an international convention to establish a common approach in contested cases on the relocation of children, where one parent wishes to move abroad. Head of international family justice Lord Justice Thorpe said that English caselaw had consistently ...
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SRA considers scrapping minimum trainee salaries
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is to examine whether it should stop setting a minimum salary level for trainees as part of its overhaul of regulation, in a review that will begin this autumn. The regulator is also considering whether to freeze the current minimum salary level ...
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Law centre to take on child asylum appeals
A law centre is to improve access to justice for asylum-seeking children by taking on and funding appeals referred to it by legal aid firms, it emerged last week. Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre (HFLC) has invited publicly funded firms to submit cases to it that ...
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Courts Service failed to collect £1.3bn of fines
The Courts Service has failed to collect more than £1.3bn of fines and other penalties, according to a report from the National Audit Office (NAO) published this week. The report on the financial management of the Ministry of Justice, which oversees HMCS, shows the amount of ...