Last 3 months headlines – Page 1485
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Conveyancing quality mark launched
The Law Society has launched a conveyancing quality scheme (CQS) designed to give clients a recognisable quality mark for firms providing a high standard of service. The scheme is based on a new Law Society transaction protocol, which will introduce consistent standards to speed up the ...
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Contempt laws needed despite web, says A-G
The increasing power of the internet has not diminished the importance of the contempt of court laws, the Attorney General said last week. Delivering the Criminal Bar Association’s annual Kalisher Lecture, Dominic Grieve QC dismissed calls to scrap the laws that prohibit the publication of evidence ...
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Justice budget will fall to £7bn in four years
The Ministry of Justice will see its budget cut by just under £2bn over the next four years, the chancellor George Osborne announced in the government’s spending review this afternoon. He told the House of Commons that the MoJ budget, which is currently £8.9bn a year, ...
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Huge court closure response, says Djanogly
A Ministry of Justice consultation proposing the closure of 103 magistrates’ courts and 54 county courts has received a huge number of responses, justice minister Jonathan Djanogly told the House of Commons’ Justice Committee this week. The minister said that the MoJ had received ...
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LSC announces contract extension to 14 December
The Legal Services Commission has announced that all current ‘family only’ and ‘family with housing’ legal aid contracts will be extended until 14 December, following the Law Society’s successful judicial review of the tender process. The LSC has until 29 October to decide whether ...
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Abolish ‘unfair’ means testing, say criminal lawyers
Criminal law solicitors have called for the abolition of the ‘unfair, unworkable and discriminatory’ system of means testing for legal aid in the magistrates’ court, claiming the change would save £100m. In a paper on legal aid funding, the Criminal Law Solicitors Association proposed that legal ...
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Pro bono enterprise
Justice minister Jonathan Djanogly believes pro bono work is good for us. With 25% cuts looming at the Ministry of Justice, how convenient to transfer government social obligations to lawyers.
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SRA: public 'satisfied' with legal services but not always 'informed'
The public has faith in legal services providers and rarely questions their expertise, but most cannot distinguish between a qualified solicitor and an unregulated practitioner, research commissioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority has suggested. Preliminary results of a focus group study of 40 consumers indicated that ...
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Regulatory creep
The new rule in place from 13 October on the requirements to be shown on letterheads reminds one of the various bites at this particular matter the regulators have had. First, it was ‘regulated by the Law Society’. One dutifully reprinted the notepaper. Then came ...
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LPC aptitude test risks ‘clones’
Solicitors have warned that proposals to introduce a compulsory aptitude test for law students seeking to enrol on the Legal Practice Course (LPC) could lead to only ‘clones’ being selected to enter the legal profession. The Law Society’s education and training committee is examining whether ...
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Revenue streams
Lord Young could have proposed banning referral fees, which in turn will remove the revenue stream for the advertising he clearly dislikes so much. Would it be too cynical to suggest that the television companies have pointed out to Young that referral fees fund the millions they take each year ...
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Outdated stance
I read with dismay the letter by David Kirwan regarding the appointment of a legal executive to the post of deputy district judge. I know from firsthand experience the challenging nature of the tests, role-play and interviews set by the Judicial Appointments Commission, and have ...
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Solicitors from Hell injunction
A third solicitor has won an interim injunction against the owner of Solicitors from Hell, the website that blacklists lawyers and law firms, following successful court actions from two other lawyers in recent weeks.
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The JAC picks candidates through fair and open competition
I was disappointed with David Kirwan’s letter, which appears to have been written from ‘the hip’ and without any research into the subject.
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EC in class action plan
The European Commission (EC) will launch a Europe-wide consultation on collective actions next month, as it attempts once again to harmonise laws and improve access to compensation for individuals and small businesses. Announcing the forthcoming consultation in a speech at the University of Valladolid in Spain ...
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Insurers accused of ‘abusing’ RTA scheme
Insurers are ‘abusing’ the scheme designed to speed up low-value road traffic accident (RTA) personal injury cases, solicitors said this week. The claims cast doubt on Lord Young’s assertion in his recent report on the ‘compensation culture’ that the RTA process ‘provides a model of how ...
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SRA publishes ‘final draft’ of its radical reforms to the code of conduct
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has today published the ‘final draft’ of its move to principles-based regulation, which will see a radical overhaul of the current code of conduct, abolishing many of the current detailed rules in favour of 10 broad principles.
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Price competition 'very possible' in criminal legal aid tendering
The chairman of the Legal Services Commission has indicated that it is ‘very possible’ that the Ministry of Justice will introduce price competition in the tendering process for criminal legal aid contracts, and predicted greater competition for criminal contracts when barristers bid for work through ProcureCos. ...
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Hotel meetings and break clauses
I attended a meeting in a hotel lobby this week. As I entered the vast room, I was struck by just how many similar meetings were going on.
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Lawyers issue warning over Lord Young’s compensation proposals
The government must not hinder access to justice for personal injury victims as it takes forward Lord Young’s report on the ‘compensation culture’, lawyers’ groups have warned. In his report released last week, Young (pictured) acknowledged that ‘the problem of the compensation culture prevalent in ...