Last 3 months headlines – Page 1567
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Explore legal representation for rape victims, says Stern review
Legal representation for rape victims should be explored to counter the unfairness in the adversarial system felt by many, Baroness Stern said in her independent review into how rape complaints are handled, published today. ‘Victims often feel that the court system is unfair because they do ...
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Public sector faces high level of employment claims
Some 37% of employment appeal cases are against public sector organisations, despite such bodies employing only 22% of the workforce, research by Milton Keynes firm EMW Picton Howell has shown. The firm's analysis of national statistics and information from the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) showed that ...
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Who will take up external investment?
The Gazette revealed this week that law firms are already getting well into discussions with external investors in readiness for when the rules change in October 2011, and indeed some are even going as far as to...
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MoJ consults on implementing Coroners Act
The Ministry of Justice has called for views on how it should implement reforms to the coroner’s service in a consultation paper. Responses will assist in the drafting of secondary legislation, with a final consultation to be held in 2011.
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Probate: inheritance tax, mistakes, Hastings-Bass and disinherited children
Mr Pitt was left brain damaged after a road accident. His wife was appointed his receiver. Mr Pitt received £1.2m in agreed damages. Acting on the advice of financial advisers Mrs Pitt transferred the lump sum to a discretionary settlement.
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Financial regulation
Civil evidence – Human rights – Disclosure – Documents (1) Financial Services Authority (2) Elisabeth Connell (3) Patricia Senra (appellants) v (1) AMRO International SA (2) Creon Management SA (respondents) and Goodman Jones LLP (interested party): CA (Civ ...
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Legal profession
Barristers’ powers and duties – Instructions – Overriding objective – Retainers Richard Buxton (solicitors) (appellant) v Huw Llewelyn Paul Mills-Owens (respondent) and Law Society (intervener): CA (Civ Div) (Sir Mark Potter (President Fam Div), Lords Justice Dyson, Maurice ...
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Down with the kids
Last week saw a new event on the regional calendar – the first Manchester Legal Awards, run by Manchester Law Society. Eversheds scooped four of the 17 gongs, while Pannone and Addleshaw Goddard picked up two apiece. Roger Pannone also won an outstanding achievement award ...
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Word games
Obiter can’t resist just a few more of those dictation blunders. Favourites this week have been a puzzling reference to a Russian Owl in the transcript of a judge’s summing up, which turned out to be a rationale. ...
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Leap of faith
Bond Pearce associate Michelle Essen (pictured with her instructor) recently leapt out of a plane along with 11 daredevil colleagues – including the firm’s chairman – as part of a six-month fundraising effort that has seen the south-west firm raise £18,394 for charity and come fifth in the Prince’s Trust ...
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Oops, did I really do that?
Time to announce the five lucky winners of last month’s competition to win copies of series two of Law & Order: UK. Readers were asked to come up with an amusing ending to the following sentence: ‘If there were a TV show called Lawyers Who Do Silly Things, I could ...
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Memory lane
An address to the students of the Society’s School of Law on the qualities required in order to become a good lawyer. Law Society’s Gazette, March 1960 ...
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The new PC fee system will end historical inequalities within the profession
The current practising certificate fee system is crude and unfair. It is a clumsy ‘one glove fits all’ approach to collecting the funds to pay for regulation. It takes no account of the type of work done by the solicitor, whether he or she handles client money and the statistical ...
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Solicitors should be concerned about the ‘entire contract’ rule
by Richard Buxtonwho heads a small firm in Cambridge specialising in environmental and public law As the solicitors in Buxton v Mills-Owens [2010] EWCA Civ 122 who stood to lose all profit costs, the Court of Appeal’s decision that we terminated our retainer with our erstwhile ...
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Courts are places for the dispensation of justice, not vulgar commerce
‘Today’s drink-driving hearings are brought to you by Gethomesafely Ltd personal breathalysers.’ Excuse our flippancy, and it will be infinity and a day before that message is broadcast across an HM Courts Service public address system. One hopes. But our disclosure this week that commercial ...
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Elephant in the room
I read with glee Mr Gafford’s letter ‘Conveyancing fee embarrassingly low’ (see [2010] Gazette, 4 March, 11), not because I take joy in other people’s angst, but because it’s about time that someone mentioned the elephant in the room.
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Blowing our own trumpet
I was surprised and disappointed at the headline and tone of the front page news item ‘Most people "could not tell a good lawyer from a bad one"’ (see [2010] Gazette, 4 March, 1).
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Burying good news
It is astonishing that the government has not publicised the Ministry of Justice research into public attitudes to legal services (see [2010] Gazette, 4 March, 1) – after ministers specifically commissioned it so they had a baseline from which to measure the impact of the reforms.
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How to define failure?
I am intrigued as to how standards of advocacy are to be assessed. Who are the people making the assessments? Do they have checklists which they tick off when the right questions are asked? What experience have they got of the courts in question?
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No level playing field
Des Hudson claims that subjecting immigration solicitors to a two-hour exam if they want to continue doing publicly funded work is ‘the least burdensome’ option for reaccreditation (see [2010] Gazette 4 March, 11).