Last 3 months headlines – Page 1596
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London councils slash £1.5m in legal spend
Six London boroughs have joined together to slash almost £1.5m a year in legal fees. The London Boroughs Legal Alliance (LBLA), which links lawyers from Harrow, Hammersmith & Fulham, Camden, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Kensington & Chelsea borough councils, aims to save £1.44m a year by using ...
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MoJ announces review of legal aid delivery
The Ministry of Justice has today announced a review into the delivery of legal aid to ensure the £2bn budget is spent correctly. Legal aid minister Lord Bach has asked Sir Ian Magee, a former permanent secretary at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, to assess the ...
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What kind of law firm are you? NB: You may not know the answer
The legal services market appears to be on the up, at least for the big firms. Mortgage approvals are rising. Halifax Legal Express wants to recruit a panel to deal with the legal services enquiries its automated system can't handle.
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Chancery Lane ‘dismay’ at Co-op’s panel cull
The Law Society has expressed its ‘dismay’ at the decision by Co-operative Financial Services to cut 3,600 sole practitioners from its conveyancing panel. The Society said that the Co-op has jeopardised its ethical image by threatening consumer choice and putting solicitors’ livelihoods at risk. Access to ...
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Can lawyers agree over contingency fees?
Contingency fees, which are widely used in employment tribunals but banned in other areas of law such as personal injury, have come to the fore recently as various bodies have submitted their responses to the Ministry of Justice’s consultation on the issue, launched in July.
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Lord Hunt publishes regulation review
A wide-ranging review of solicitors' regulation commissioned by the Law Society and conducted by Lord Hunt of Wirral (pictured) is published today. Among the Tory peer's 88 recommendations is a proposal for what he describes as 'authorised internal regulation', under which law firms of all sizes would regulate themselves subject ...
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A riposte to Professor Richard Susskind
I attended last week a meeting in Dublin of the chief executives of bars and law societies from around the world – well, from Europe, and common law jurisdictions beyond Europe (Africa, North America and the Asia Pacific region).
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Private equity: the discussion is already well under way
Over on our LinkedIn group some really interesting discussion topics are being batted around, especially about what possible future investment in law firms by private equity firms might mean...
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Society's PII helpline to target assigned risks pool
The Law Society has announced that from next Monday, 5 October, its professional indemnity insurance helpline will expand its service to assist firms that have fallen into the assigned risks pool because they were unable to obtain cover before the renewal deadline.
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A look at the latest changes to the Civil Procedure Rules (50th update)
The Civil Procedure (Amendment) Rules 2009 (SI 2092) were made on 28 July 2009 and, with certain exceptions, come into force today. They are accompanied by an update (the 50th) containing amendments to the practice directions which are such a key part of the modern system. ...
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Duty calls: the hard and sometimes demanding and thankless role of a duty solicitor
The duty solicitor I’m shadowing negotiates electronically controlled gates under the unblinking gaze of CCTV cameras. He arrives at a windowless room beneath the court, where the table and seats are bolted to the floor and there is a glass viewing port in the heavy wooden door. A guard from ...
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Horses for courses
A friend passed me an article entitled ‘Taking the reins’, by Lucy Trevelyan, about equine law (see [2008] Gazette, 7 August, 14). As I am a life-long horsewoman (and journalist who sometimes writes for the equestrian press) I found it really interesting.
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Let’s be practical
As a newly qualified lawyer, I note with interest that the Legal Services Policy Institute is proposing that the training contract be scrapped. Yes, it is difficult to get a training contract in the current climate and yes, it is even more difficult to secure employment after completion of training. ...
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Valuable training
I am disappointed to read of the Legal Services Policy Institute’s suggestion that training contracts be scrapped and that students qualify immediately upon completion of the LPC (see [2009] Gazette, 24 September, 1).
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Discouraging words
The headline ‘Firms "over the worst" of recession’ (see [2009] Gazette, 24 September, 1) may have been intended to be encouraging, but readers will have been struck by the extraordinary insensitivity of the wording of the report, which said that firms were ‘finally reaping the rewards of staff cuts’.
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Solution to the insurance crisis
As someone who practises in the field of property mortgage fraud claims, it gives me no comfort to say that I foresaw that PI premiums would escalate and – coupled with the drop in conveyancing caused by the recession – create the financial crisis for solicitors reported in your front-page ...
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LG Law and Practice diploma
Congratulations from the board to this year's successful candidates and prizewinners. The diploma celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2009, and several hundred solicitors have earned the highly respected "Dip. L.G." letters after their names over that time. The course lasts for nine months, counts for CPD ...
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Trumpeting legal aid
As Obiter reported back in July, musical lawyers Denis Cameron and Basil Preuveneers, both Law Society council members, were convinced they could make as much cash from busking as from being a legal aid lawyer. After a rousing stint in London’s Covent Garden, with Cameron ...
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Bookish appeal
Any solicitors wishing to clear some shelf space and do their bit for history might be interested in an appeal launched by Suzana Edwards of Trawscoed Mansion in Wales. It is asking lawyers to donate leather bound or decorative hardback law books (of any age) for the restoration of the ...