Last 3 months headlines – Page 1235
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Green light for deferred prosecution agreements
The government today announced plans to legislate to create US-style deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) for corporate crime. Publishing a government response to a Ministry of Justice consultation held last summer the justice minister, Damian Green (pictured), said DPAs 'will give prosecutors an effective new tool to tackle what has become ...
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Finding the skills to manage change
We have all read the articles and comments regarding the inability of many law firms to manage their own practice, let alone deal with the changes currently sweeping through the profession. Many partners/owners have never been trained in management skills and are finding it difficult to evolve a strategy for ...
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No loophole for fee-ban dodgers, SRA warns
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has warned it may not grant licences to alternative business structures set up solely to get round the referral fee ban. The organisation today promised to look carefully at ABS applicants’ proposed referral arrangements and block business models not truly operating as ...
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Call for clients to have a say on fitness to practise
Continuing to practise as a lawyer will depend on regular positive reviews from clients and colleagues if the Legal Services Consumer Panel has its way. In its latest submission to the Legal Education and Training Review, set up by the three main regulators, the consumer champion calls on the review ...
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Do we need a European Public Prosecutor?
It would be cowardly not to begin this week with comments on the reports that the UK government will opt out of the EU’s criminal justice measures. I stress at the outset that the views I give on this subject are mine, and not those of the organisation for which ...
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Cut oral hearings, says Slaughter and May’s Boardman
An influential magic circle partner today makes a public call for a reduction in oral hearings to reform a legal system which he says has returned to the ‘dark days’ described in Dickens’ Bleak House. Nigel Boardman, partner at Slaughter and May, says lawyers should ...
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Super regulator goes shopping for legal panel
The Legal Services Board today opened the application process to join its panel of legal advisers. The super regulator says it requires support for public and private law, legislative drafting and litigation support. Most pieces of work are typically valued below £5,000 but more complex and ...
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The New Putney Debates - a fairer future?
by Melanie Strickland, a solicitor and Occupy London supporter One year ago Occupy set up a camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral. During the four-and-a-half-month tented occupation, it hosted a wide-ranging programme of events in its Tent City University, and was visited by many thousands of people.
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No place for private equity in law firms, say finance chiefs
More than three-quarters of finance directors at leading commercial law firms believe private equity investment is inappropriate. In a survey of directors at 25 of the top 100 firms, 77% were unhappy with law firms attracting capital through private equity investors. An even greater number - ...
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Cameron’s rehab scheme ‘empty rhetoric’ says Labour
David Cameron has outlined what he called the coalition’s ‘tough but intelligent’ approach to crime, with payment by results for companies and charities providing rehabilitation services. In a well-trailed speech at the Centre for Social Justice thinktank in London, the prime minister said ‘retribution’ and tough ...
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Brace yourself for unprecedented change, says master of rolls
Implementing the Jackson costs reforms will inevitably lead to satellite litigation, the master of the rolls has warned. He urged courts and lawyers to ‘do what they can’ to minimise it. In a wide-ranging speech at the Law Society yesterday, Lord Dyson (pictured) said that the ...
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Lawyers should not fear Scottish independence
The signs are that lawyers have little to fear from Scottish independence. Of course with the polls currently showing a clear majority against independence, that reassurance may remain an academic comfort for the legal profession. But of the many arguments that will be wheeled out against independence – from Nato ...
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McKinnon solicitor is Legal Personality of the Year
Karen Todner, the London solicitor who represented ‘Pentagon hacker’ Gary McKinnon, received a standing ovation as she collected the Law Society Gazette’s Legal Personality of the Year award at last night’s Law Society Excellence awards ceremony. Todner (pictured) has been at the forefront of high-profile extradition ...
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Bankruptcy tourism
Any English judge sitting regularly in the personal insolvency jurisdiction is likely, at one time or another, to have considered a debtor’s petition in which all the listed debts were incurred in a foreign country, in a foreign currency and, usually, to foreign creditors. The currency was probably the euro, ...
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Advancing the case for swift action
In January, the Gazette published an article by me about the Stop Delaying Justice initiative which was introduced that month. Responses were invited. Last month, the Gazette sent me about a dozen emails from defence solicitors. They all make good points. I am grateful, particularly to those who managed to ...
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Costs caps and multiple parties
In recent years, the Patents County Court (PCC), in particular through the efforts of Judge Colin Birss QC, has taken great strides to make IP litigation more affordable and accessible for smaller businesses. A key provision at its disposal is a cap on the costs which a party may be ...
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Poor nations need help now over climate change
Former Ireland president Mary Robinson is right to advocate helping those in need due to the very real effects of climate change.
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Do we need more law students?
Further to the article of 24 September at Gazette Online by Ian Wimbush, I write to express my astonishment at the writer’s statement in his final paragraph: ‘That, with the recent consolidation and the increase in law students, tends to paint a rather more optimistic picture for the future of ...
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Reality check
Do we have any sympathy with the comments of the solicitor judge whose name was withheld on request, bemoaning the changes to the pension regime for the judiciary? I think not.
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Just business
Once again the profession is tying itself in knots over pro bono work, in effect fiddling while Rome burns (‘Should pro bono be compulsory?’).