Last 3 months headlines – Page 1549
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PI lawyers asked to report ‘foul play’ by insurers
Personal injury lawyers are being asked to provide evidence of alleged foul play by insurance companies that settle motor accident claims directly with victims. The Motor Accident Solicitors Society (MASS) and Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) have asked members to pass on evidence of alleged ...
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Mexican civil rights lawyer pleads for international support network
A Mexican civil rights lawyer who has received death threats in her own country visited the UK last week to persuade law firms and the Law Society to form an international support network for lawyers. Alba Cruz (pictured), from Oaxaca state, is representing 104 political dissidents, ...
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Town hall budget cut fears over local government legal services
Local government legal services will be ‘severely at risk of implosion’ if public sector budget cuts force a decline in professional standards, the new chairman of the Solicitors in Local Government group has warned. Stephen Turner, a solicitor at Kingston-upon-Hull City Council, said maintaining services and ...
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Commission wins legal aid contract fight
A London immigration firm has lost a judicial review action against the Legal Services Commission after the firm missed a deadline to apply for a new legal aid contract. The High Court ruled that the LSC was not obliged to write to the firm directly to notify it of ...
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Master of the rolls Lord Neuberger: ‘Train all lawyers in mediation’
The master of the rolls has called for mediation to become part of every lawyer’s training from university, but warned against an overzealous approach to alternative dispute resolution. Speaking at the Civil Mediation Council’s annual conference, Lord Neuberger (pictured) said: ‘If mediation and other forms of ...
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Nineteen new solicitor MPs enter House of Commons
Last week’s general election saw 19 solicitors newly elected as MPs – 14 for the Conservative Party and five for Labour. The new solicitor MPs came from all sections of the profession, including high street firms, large commercial practices, in-house and the public sector.
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LSC begins phased rollout of eForms
Criminal law solicitors this week voiced concerns over the Legal Services Commission’s track record on IT projects, as it began a phased national rollout of its new electronic criminal billing and claim forms. The new eForms are part of the LSC’s delivery transformation programme, designed to ...
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Criminal law firm start-ups confound cull predictions
Government proposals to reduce the number of criminal law firms have not deterred new firms from setting up, according to specialist legal aid consultants. Simon Pottinger, founder of JRS Consultants, predicted that the number of firms with a criminal legal aid contract is likely to have ...
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Eversheds to fight employment tribunal bias ruling
National firm Eversheds last week lodged an appeal against an Employment Tribunal ruling that it must pay £123,300 in compensation to a male associate who suffered sexual discrimination during the firm’s 2009 redundancy programme. The tribunal found that former real estate associate John de Belin was ...
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Technical problems continue to dog RTA claims portal
Technical problems are continuing to hamper the new road traffic accident (RTA) information exchange, set up to handle hundreds of thousands of low-value RTA claims. Solicitors told the Gazette this week that some have still not received access codes for the new RTA claims portal despite ...
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Law firms reveal impact of recession in benchmarking survey
Small to medium-sized law firms axed nearly one in 10 staff as the recession bit and profit per equity partner plunged by a quarter, new research shows. However, market conditions have improved in recent months, with firms starting to hire again and revenues expected to remain stable in 2010. ...
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Chelsea and Yorkshire to review conveyancing panels
Chelsea and Yorkshire building societies are to conduct a review of their conveyancing panels following the merger of the two lenders last month, the Gazette has learned. The merger, which created the second largest building society in the country, was completed on 1 April. ...
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Quinn administrators recommend closure of PII arm
The administrators of Quinn Insurance have recommended that the Irish insurer’s professional indemnity insurance (PII) business in the UK should close for good, the Gazette has learned. Administrators Grant Thornton told the Gazette that in their proposals to the Irish Financial Regulator, which regulates Quinn, they ...
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What will having Ken Clarke as justice secretary mean for solicitors?
So Kenneth Clarke is the new justice secretary. Not many people saw that one coming. Firstly, because everyone fully expected it to be Dominic Grieve, who had been shadow justice secretary, and secondly, because Clarke himself was presumed to be in line for the business role.
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Solicitor and firm fined £400,000 for aiding share scam
The senior partner at London firm Atlantic Law has been banned by the City watchdog from working in financial services and along with his firm, fined £400,000 in total for ‘recklessly’ signing off adverts issued by Spanish fraudsters.
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The plight of human rights lawyers in Mexico
If you think the UK legal profession is in crisis, then consider the lot of Mexican human rights lawyer, Alba Cruz, who has received death threats and whose mother and family have been caught up in the crossfire – and that’s just for starters.
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Time for a ‘meetings tsar’?
One of the things I don’t miss since leaving partnership is the endless round of meetings. Partners’ meetings, departmental meetings, team meetings, one-to-one meetings, the list goes on. Were they all necessary? Did they always achieve something?
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New scheme to target personal injury claims
A new national legal partnership, Loyalty Law, is set to launch next month to generate personal injury leads for high-street firms, the Gazette can reveal. Around 30 firms have already signed up to ...
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The law is about quality not nationality
The news grows worse in the eurozone. The tardiness of leaders to come to the rescue of Greece has made a crisis for all of us, and leads me to think about the role of nationality in the EU, with a particular focus on how it plays out in the ...
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Co-op launches new service for insurers
Co-operative Legal Services has today launched a ‘one-call accident management service’ for brokers and insurers in a bid increase its motor claims work. The new service will offer the full range of services – legal and non-legal – needed to resolve claims following a road traffic ...