Last 3 months headlines – Page 1577
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Lawyers attack government plans to extend family reporting
Family lawyers have attacked government plans to extend the media’s right to report family cases, warning that they will clog the courts with preliminary hearings and lead to miscarriages of justice. The media have been allowed to report on the process of family cases since April, ...
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Law Society unlikely to introduce fellowship scheme
The Law Society appears likely to rule out introducing a fellowship scheme in the near future, but may consider extending membership in light of the introduction of alternative business structures. Introducing a fellowship scheme for solicitors ‘who reach an agreed professional standard’ was one of the ...
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Bar eyes contract push with new procurement vehicles
Solicitors could find themselves approaching barristers for work as the bar takes advantage of new freedoms approved last month, the incoming chairman of the Bar Council told the Gazette this week. Nicholas Green QC said there would be a reversal of the ‘normal order of things’ ...
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Bar Council claims ‘privileged’ perception is ‘outdated’
The Bar Council has claimed that the perception of the bar as a profession for the privileged is ‘outdated’ – but it is unable to say what percentage of barristers attended state school. It published a report last week showing a range of initiatives taken to ...
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MPs lobby to exclude solicitors from asbestos compensation scheme
MPs are lobbying prime minister Gordon Brown to exclude solicitors from any government-run scheme to compensate workers for asbestos-related pleural plaques. A group of Labour MPs closely involved with a parliamentary bill on the matter have held ‘frequent’ private meetings with Brown and senior ministers. Jim ...
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Criminal legal aid firms threaten boycott of BVT pilot
More than 120 criminal legal aid firms will refuse to take part in Legal Services Commission plans to pilot best value tendering (BVT) unless they are indemnified against transfer of undertaking, protection of employment (TUPE) actions arising from it, the Gazette has learned. The commission wants ...
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Law Society threatens legal action over complaints staff
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 ...
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Has the bar been betrayed by government?
In his inaugural speech before taking over the tiller from Desmond Browne QC as chairman of the bar, Nick Green QC listed three things that have contributed towards creating instability for barristers: legal aid cuts, competition from solicitor-advocates and the ‘ambitious’ expansion into advocacy by the Crown Prosecution Service.
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Law Society Charity donates £369,000 to good causes
The Law Society Charity donated £369,000 to good causes over the past year despite the recession, it announced today. Its accounts for the 2008/09 financial year showed a 3.4% drop in grants made compared to the previous year. The charity supports organisations ...
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Government moves could hit City pay packets
Perhaps London’s investment bankers are wishing they’d chosen a career in corporate law instead. Alistair Darling looks set to come down heavily on banker bonuses in his pre-budget speech today, with commentators predicting a super tax on bonuses in excess of the impending 50% income tax for high earners.
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Generation gap
It came as a breath of fresh air to read in last week’s leader how as a profession we complain that we are no longer respected, while, on the facing page, a letter from Peter S Hughes confirmed his rugged independence and refusal to enter into referral fee arrangements.
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Ethics and the legal profession, part three
In the last of three articles describing the history of ethics and the legal profession, Mark Humphries looks at the development of professional regulation and considers future ethical challenges
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The ‘first’ justice commissioner – a three-minute guide
Who? Viviane Reding has just been appointed as the commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship in José Manuel Barroso’s new European Commission. As such, she will be responsible for the lawyers’ portfolio, along with the many justice issues that the commission now deals with. She is the first to ...
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What to watch in invoice finance
Invoice finance has grown enormously in the last decade after the banks had finally understood that they could not easily obtain a fixed charge over book debts. Rather than rely solely on a floating charge, banks realised that the safest way of financing the cashflow of ...
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Sharing spaces for lawyers may work, but only if lawyers want them to
I was travelling home on the tube the other day and the chap next to me was tapping away on a Windows Mobile device. He looked like an IT type so I engaged him in conversation. Nice fella – turns out he was working on a government project to create ...
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Family law
Birth parents – Children’s rights – Residence orders Re B (a child): SC (Lord Hope (Deputy President), Lady Hale, Lord Collins, Lord Kerr, Lord Clarke): 19 November 2009 The appellant ...
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Clinical negligence
Blood disorders – Causation – Duty of care – Genetic testing (1) Hanan Basem Farraj (2) Basem Farraj (claimants/first respondents) v (1) King’s Healthcare NHS Trust (KCH) (first defendant/part 20 claimant/appellant) (2) Cytogenetic DNA Services Ltd (CSL) (second defendant/part ...
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Criminal law: youth justice and sentencing
Major changes are being made to the way that courts may sentence young offenders. On 27 April, provisions were brought into force to increase the use of referral orders. These are mandatory if the offence is imprisonable and a first-time offender admits the offence and all connected offences, and the ...
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Education and training is about much more than CPD
As the legal landscape changes, lawyers are finding that it is no longer good enough for them to be just good lawyers – they must also run their firms more effectively and understand their commercial clients better. As Maureen Miller, the Law Society’s head of membership services, points out: ‘It ...
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What is the point of being a solicitor?
Can someone tell me what is the point of being a solicitor? To get a practising certificate, years of study and financial hardship must be endured. Those who survive struggle to get a training contract. Those that eventually get the coveted practising certificate then join one of the most stressful ...