Last 3 months headlines – Page 1468
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Aluminium deal, London IT, Euro 2012 football, healthcare and telecoms
UEFA on track: The London office of French firm Salans advised European real estate investment management firm Meyer Bergman on a €200m (£169m) joint venture to redevelop the main railway station in Katowice, Poland, in preparation for the UEFA Euro 2012 football tournament. ...
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Solicitor-advocate training 'not fit for purpose'
The training given to solicitor-advocates is ‘not fit for purpose’ and must be improved to conquer the perception that they are inferior to barristers, according to an independent review. In a report commissioned by the Law Society, consultant Nick Smedley said that, unless the training of ...
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'Unrelenting' pressure on Court of Appeal
The Court of Appeal is facing ‘unrelenting’ pressure from increased demand and reduced resources, the lord chief justice has warned. In his foreword to the court’s annual report, published today, Lord Justice Judge (pictured) paid tribute to the judges who work ‘late into the night ...
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Legal aid tender quality checks 'flawed'
The High Court ruled this week that the process used to check the quality standards of firms awarded public law and mental health legal aid contracts breached equality standards, but there was ‘no legal flaw’ in the Legal Services Commission’s public law tender.
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FOIL president: cut claimant lawyer fees
Claimant personal injury lawyers’ fees should be cut by extending the new road traffic accident (RTA) claims process, and by allowing insurance companies to undertake ‘third-party capture’, the new president of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers (FOIL) told the Gazette this week.
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Legal aid backlog leaves some defendants unrepresented
Delays in processing legal aid applications are leaving some defendants in London’s Crown and magistrates’ courts unrepresented, criminal solicitors have warned. Malcolm Duxbury, president of the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association, told the Gazette there is a ‘very large’ backlog in processing and assessing Crown court ...
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Solicitor who 'shamed profession' jailed
A solicitor who ‘brought shame on the profession’ has been jailed for eight-and-a-half years at Croydon Crown Court for his part in an immigration scam. Adeyinka Adeniran, 39, a principal at London firm Julius Ceasar, supplied clients and documents to a bogus college located at a ...
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Students get murder case referred back to Court of Appeal
A group from the University of Bristol have become the first students to succeed in having the case of a convicted murderer referred back to the Court of Appeal through the university’s Innocence Project. The students convinced the Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer the case ...
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Law firms face new year 'cash crunch'
Law firms will face a ‘cash crunch’ at the end of January, but are likely to find it difficult to source finance from their banks, experts warned this week The news came as the Solicitors Regulation Authority revealed that it wrote to the top 50 law ...
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Green paper warning from mental health professionals
The government’s pledge to divert mentally ill people away from the criminal justice system and towards health services is ‘strong on rhetoric’, but understates the extent of the problem, mental health professionals have warned. Justice secretary Kenneth Clarke’s green paper on sentencing and rehabilitation, published this ...
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£1bn paid out to law firms for handling coal miners’ claims
Some 19 law firms each received more than £10m in fees for handling claims on behalf of former coal miners who contracted lung disease in the course of their work, parliamentary records show. More than 500 firms handled at least one claim for chronic obstructive pulmonary ...
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City claims EC proposal would 'dilute English law'
A European Commission proposal to consolidate contract law across the EU would hamper international trade by diluting the strength of English law, City lawyers have warned. Responding to a Ministry of Justice call for evidence on a European Commission green paper proposing a new European contract ...
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Law Society sets up lobbying working party
The Law Society has set up a working party to address government plans to force law firms to disclose the identities of their lobbying clients, after the coalition government said it will establish a register of lobbyists in a bill to be introduced next year. ...
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Judiciary has failed to lure City lawyers, lord chief justice admits
The head of the judiciary has admitted being ‘unsuccessful’ in persuading City lawyers to become judges. Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge told the Lords Constitution Committee yesterday that, if he could persuade City lawyers and their firms that a judicial career is a plausible option, ‘we ...
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Will your brand stand up to the new competition?
The spectre of increased competition in the legal market has prompted wildly different responses from law firms. Some are rolling up their sleeves and preparing for the fight; others seem to have given in already or have senior partners whose main strategy is to hope they ...
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SRA consults on simplifying regulation for sole practitioners
Sole practitioners should no longer be required to have their practising certificate endorsed every year, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has proposed, publishing a consultation on the matter this week. Instead, the SRA has proposed that sole practitioner firms will be indefinitely authorised from 31 March 2012. ...
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Firms set to be forced to publish diversity data
Law firms and barristers’ chambers will be forced to publish data about the diversity of their legal staff, under plans unveiled by the Legal Services Board today. Publishing a consultation, Increasing diversity and social mobility in the legal workforce: transparency and evidence, the LSB said that ...
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10% of your earnings to charity?
Three of the five magic circle firms publish corporate social responsibility reports, outlining, among other things, their charitable giving in terms of time and money. According to these reports, and where figures were available, in 2009/10, Linklaters donated £2.5m to charity and Clifford Chance £2.4m. Over ...
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Impact of the VAT rise on law firms
On 4 January 2011 the standard rate of VAT will rise from 17.5% to 20% – the third change in the standard rate in the last two years. This impending rise may have prompted some savvy partners to buy their new refrigerators or computers now instead of next year, but ...
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Will parliament spot the real problem with legal aid cuts?
by Paul Rumley, a partner in the clinical negligence team at Withy King As shown in president Linda Lee’s excellent summary piece it is clear that the government has a simple arithmetical problem (over and above the deficit itself). The debate on legal aid today in ...