Last 3 months headlines – Page 1579
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Woolf calls for arbitration overhaul as he launches new guidance
International arbitration has ‘lost its way’, the former lord chief justice Lord Woolf (pictured) told the Gazette this week, as he launched a set of guidelines which will build mediation into the arbitration process. Woolf co-chaired an international commission for the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution ...
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Quarter of firms expected to walk away from legal aid in next five years
More than a quarter of firms expect to walk away from legal aid work in the next five years, a report slamming the Legal Services Commission’s poor administration has revealed. The report by public spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) showed that one in six ...
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Guidance notes and rule changes
I am interested in the recent exchange of letters between Messrs Hopper and Treverton-Jones and Antony Townsend, the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s chief executive, about changes to the guidance notes to rule 9 of the Code of Conduct made on 13 November 2009.
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Legal groups publish ‘manifesto for justice’
An eight-strong coalition of legal, consumer and campaigning groups today published their ‘manifesto for justice’ as part of a political campaign intended to strengthen justice and the rule of law. AdviceUK, the Bar Council, the Institute of Legal Executives, Justice, the Law Centres Federation, the Legal ...
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Paying referral fees is not a crime
What a relief to read Michael Moore’s recent letter in the Gazette (‘Don’t tie our hands’) as I had begun to think that I was the only solicitor left who didn’t regard the paying of referral fees as akin to some kind of criminal activity.
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Law firms must do better for returning mums
Somehow you expect better from law firms – they can’t plead ignorance of employment law, after all – but it turns out that they can be just as bad as other employers when it comes to maternity rights.
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Chinese bar strengthens UK links
China’s Tianjin Bar Association (TBA) will visit the UK next week in a bid to strengthen ties with UK lawyers. The TBA delegation will visit London and Bristol on Monday and Tuesday next week, in a move that the Law Society said will provide business opportunities ...
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SRA boosts the diversity of adjudicators
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has confirmed the appointments of a panel of 23 external adjudicators, who will make decisions on regulatory matters.
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New commission chairman planning to reform adult social care law
The Law Commission is planning ‘very important and potentially very exciting’ reforms to the law on social care for adults, the commission’s new chairman said in an interview for the Gazette. Sir James Munby, who now sits in the Court of Appeal as Lord Justice Munby, ...
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New Law Commission chairman planning to reform adult social care law
The Law Commission is planning ‘very important and potentially very exciting’ reforms to the law on social care for adults, the commission’s new chairman said in an interview for the Gazette. Sir James Munby, who now sits in the Court of Appeal as Lord Justice Munby, ...
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Customers will rule the legal services revolution
Where are the clients? Or more to the point, where are the profits going to be in certain law firm client groups in the future market for legal services?
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Libel judges face a tough time in the media
Mr Justice Eady, eminent libel judge and newspaper hate figure, has thick skin. Speaking at today’s Justice conference on free speech and privacy, Eady quoted snippets from newspaper articles accusing him of ‘moral and social nihilism,’ ‘arrogance,’ ‘immorality,’ and to top it off, ‘amorality’.
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Legal ethics, past and present – part two
In the second of three articles tracing the history of ethics and the legal profession, Mark Humphries recalls a time when accusing a lawyer of being a ‘daffy-down-dilly’ was as serious as accusing a doctor of killing a patient
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Was the LSCP better and cheaper than the LSB will be?
So, farewell then LSCP. Another set of initials is about to bite the dust, namely those of the Legal Services Consultative Panel. To continue in initials mode, the LSCP followed on from ACLEC (the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct) and will be succeeded by the ...
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Can women really rise to the top in big law firms?
Looking at some research into non-legal directors in top-100 law firms yesterday, I was shocked by the gender split at big firms for 'support' roles such as finance, IT and HR director.
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Legal Lives: solicitor Daniel Radiven on coping with cancer
Nine years ago, I made my first and previously only contribution to the Gazette. As an ambitious trainee with my former firm, Betesh, I had a letter published in which I bemoaned the absence of an adequate forum or mechanism for the assessment of costs in cases settled pre-issue. The ...
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Negligence
Asbestos - Causation - Duty of care - Mesothelioma Karen Sienkiewicz (administratrix of the estate of Enid Costello, deceased) v Greif (UK) Ltd: Lord Clarke of Stone-cum-Ebony, Lord Justice Scott Baker, Lady Justice Smith): CA (Civ Div) : 6 ...
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Commercial considerations can influence the discharge of liabilities
In Collier v P&MJ Wright (Holdings) Ltd [2007] EWCA Civ 1329, [2008] 1 WLR 643, [2007] All ER(D) 233 (Dec) (Collier), the Court of Appeal examined the rule in Pinnel’s case (1603) 5 Coke’s Rep 117a (the rule), in the context of contemporary commercial considerations.
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Immigration: migrants who wish to qualify as UK lawyers
Studying law with a UK institution and becoming a solicitor or barrister in the UK has long been an esteemed achievement by lawyers around the world. Historically, the UK has welcomed migrants who wish to undertake the challenge. Immigration rules (the rules) and related concessions have made routes to becoming ...
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Why newspapers lack interest in court reporting
The name Mike Taylor is not one that many lawyers will recognise, even though he has spent his entire working life writing about the law. In an extraordinary 42 years at the Press Association law courts news service, he reported countless cases in the High Court, ...