Last 3 months headlines – Page 1574
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How will the SRA apply ‘principles-based regulation’ to legal services?
‘Principles-based regulation means moving away from reliance on detailed prescriptive rules and relying more on high-level principles to set the standards by which regulated firms must conduct business.’ So said Lord Hunt in his report on legal services regulation, which advocated such a switch. The potential ...
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Book sales, climate change funds and hotel developments
Energy boost: Allen & Overy advised a consortium of six banks on creating the Marguerite Fund, an energy, climate change and infrastructure fund for EU member states. The banks contributed €100m (£90m) each, with the fund seeking to raise €1.5bn (£1.35bn) by mid-2011.
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City firms failing to support solicitors who want to become judges
Concern is mounting over City firms’ failure to support solicitors who want to become judges, Law Society chief executive Des Hudson was expected to tell the Law Society Council this week. In his monthly report, Hudson also suggests that a ‘similar message’ might emerge from a ...
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Law Society threatens legal action over OLC jobs
The Law Society has threatened the government and the new solicitor complaints-handling body with legal action following their decision not to automatically reassign staff from the Legal Complaints Service (LCS) to the new Office for Legal Complaints (OLC). The functions of the LCS are to be ...
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European Court of Human Rights in 'crisis'
Europe’s foremost human rights court is in ‘crisis’, with a backlog of more than 120,000 cases waiting up to seven years to be heard, lawyers have warned. Leading human rights barrister Lord Lester QC said last week that the influx of new states since the ...
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Solicitors dismayed over chancellor's legal aid budget cuts
Solicitors reacted with dismay last week to further planned cuts in the £2bn annual legal aid budget outlined in chancellor Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget Report. The chancellor included plans by 2012/13 to make ‘£360m of savings in the criminal justice system by improving case management, putting underperforming ...
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Law Society to advise students about the risks of a legal career
The Law Society is to step up its campaign to warn students of the risks and challenges faced in pursuing a legal career. Expanding the Society’s information campaign is one of a number of proposals being considered by the education and training committee to address the ...
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Contingency fees regulation will drive lawyers out of the market
Government proposals to regulate contingency fees will drive lawyers out of the market and leave 500,000 people a year without legal representation, employment lawyers have warned. Draft regulations published this month by the Ministry of Justice propose a 25% cap on the proportion of a client’s ...
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Solicitors ‘to profit’ from instructing barristers following BSB rule changes
Solicitors will for the first time be able to profit from instructing barristers following rule changes agreed last month by the Bar Standards Board (BSB), a legal businessman has said. Peter Rouse, director of online barristers’ directory Bar Select, said the new rules on how barristers ...
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Judiciary must speak out on 'parlous state of family law'
The judiciary must ‘come off the bench’ and speak out about the ‘parlous state of family law in 2009’, lord justice Wall has said. Speaking at the Association of Lawyers for Children conference, the Court of Appeal judge said ‘the time has come when the historical ...
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Law firms urged to conduct identity checks on staff
Firms are putting themselves at risk by failing to carry out basic identity checks on their staff before employing them, the chairman of the Law Society’s conveyancing and land law committee has warned. Richard Barnett said he had been made aware that many firms were not ...
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Law Society seeks judicial review over costs capping
The Law Society is set to seek a judicial review of the government’s move to drastically reduce the legal costs that defendants can reclaim if they are acquitted of a criminal offence. A regulation introduced by the Ministry of Justice at the end of October removed ...
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SRA to overhaul regulation and scrap ‘unjustified’ rules
The Solicitors Code of Conduct is to be rewritten and a swath of detailed conduct rules are likely to scrapped under plans being discussed today by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The SRA intends to fundamentally reform the way it regulates, moving from the current ‘box-ticking’ system ...
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Scottish Parliament warned that ‘Tesco law’ could trigger English invasion
The Scottish Parliament was warned this week that moves to liberalise Scotland’s legal services market could spark a takeover by English invaders. Lobby group the Scottish Law Agents Society (SLAS) told members of the justice committee at Holyrood that ‘external ownership’ of law firms makes it more likely that Scottish ...
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Foreign firms cannot practise Indian law, Mumbai court says
Foreign lawyers in India cannot advise clients on any matters of Indian law, the Mumbai High Court ruled yesterday. The court confirmed that legal advice outside of litigation practice is covered by the ban on foreign lawyers set down in the 1961 Advocates Act. ...
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What is the best way to combat legal aid cuts?
By now many of you will be as inured to the howls of outrage from the profession over legal aid cuts as you are to the cuts themselves. Both are becoming an almost weekly, even daily, occurrence, it saddens one to report.
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Government’s £23m legal aid cuts ‘affront to justice’
The government will cut £23m from the £2.1bn legal aid budget by reducing fees for police station work, scrapping file review payments in criminal cases and consolidating committal hearing payments. The government said that its reforms are ‘designed to help sustain the legal aid budget’ and ...
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Chancery Lane hails scrapping of best value tendering pilots
The Law Society has welcomed the Ministry of Justice’s decision to ask the Legal Services Commission not to proceed with its planned pilots for best value tendering (BVT).
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Unemployment rate among solicitors climbs by 400%
The number of unemployed solicitors on benefits has quadrupled during the recession to more than 1,800, according to an analysis of official statistics by the Conservative Party reported in today’s Daily Telegraph. Along with architects, surveyors and vets, solicitors comprise one of the professional groups to ...
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‘Chaos’ predicted over virtual court pilot
Solicitors have predicted ‘chaos’ after provisions forcing defendants in custody in the virtual court pilot areas to use the videolink for court appearances were brought in yesterday. A pilot of the scheme, which enables defendants to make their first court appearance via videolink from the police ...