Last 3 months headlines – Page 1598
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National bar leaders rally in defence of legal aid
More than 50 bar leaders from around the world have issued a communiqué in support of access to justice, urging governments to fulfil their duty to provide adequate legal aid funding. They gathered today at the Law Society in London at the opening of the legal ...
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Free Roman Polanski – now!
Doesn’t your heart go out to film director Roman Polanski? He was arrested in Switzerland last week and yet all the poor guy had done, according to the 1977 charges against him, was sodomise a 13-year-old girl and force her to engage in ‘oral copulation’.
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BSB to decide barristers’ role in new legal structures
The Bar Standards Board will decide the role barristers will be allowed to have in new legal structures in November, it announced today. By then, it says, it will have analysed the results of research it commissioned into the benefits to consumers of the various different ...
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Support service launched for bereaved families of victims
A new national service giving one-to-one support for the bereaved families of murder and manslaughter victims is to begin work this financial year, justice secretary Jack Straw has announced. National organisation Victim Support is receiving an extra £2m from the government to fund the new ...
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Bach rejects Society’s legal aid fee cut fears
Legal aid minister Lord Bach (pictured) has rejected Chancery Lane’s demand for an extension to the consultation period on proposed criminal legal aid cuts. He also dismissed the Law Society’s allegation that the August consultation paper Legal aid: funding reforms is ‘incoherent’ and ‘deeply flawed’. ...
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New IT director blog: how to do, and not to do, outsourcing
In his first instalment, the Masked IT Director reports from the frontlines of legal IT… a suppliers’ conferenceThe Alternative Legal IT Conference: catchy title, eh?...
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Could the LSC be the next target of government cuts?
Relations between the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Services Commission do not appear to have improved since my last post on the subject. Indeed, things may even have got worse.
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Immigration: what can lawyers do?
There has been a twist to my report last week that the incoming president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, has undertaken to separate justice and security issues at European level by creating a commissioner for justice and fundamental rights alone.
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Bar urges halt on contingency fees reform
The Bar Council has urged the government to halt plans to regulate contingency fees, to allow time for greater public debate. In its response to the Ministry of Justice’s consultation on regulating the damages-based agreements that are frequently used in employment cases, the council said proposed ...
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Law Society acts on ‘inflated’ indemnity premiums
The Law Society has written to every professional indemnity insurer asking for an ‘urgent response’ to its concerns over the ‘hugely inflated’ premiums being quoted ahead of this year’s renewal deadline. The Society said calls to its dedicated professional indemnity insurance helpline indicated that insurers were ...
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General practice firms: look in the mirror, before it's too late
Are some traditional, 'general practice' firms living in cloud cuckoo land? In terms of how well they're managing their firms and especially their staff, and how they're going about marketing themselves, I'm beginning to think they are.
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Legal profession
Costs –Intervention in solicitors’ practice – Suspected dishonesty – Solicitors Accounts Rules Shahrokh Mireskandari v Law Society: Ch D (Mr Justice Henderson): 4 September 2009 The court was required to determine issues of costs and other consequential matters ...
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Family law
Care orders – Interim orders – Likelihood of significant harm – Weight of evidence Re MGR (a child) sub nom Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council v (1) JD (2) JR (3) RD (4) MGR (by her guardian): CA (Civ Div) ...
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Media: is Google a publisher or merely a facilitator?
A Google search is the first port of call for many of us when researching anything online. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, Google receives several hundred million queries each day. The Google engine searches an index of web pages, compiled and updated by Google automatically, and provides access to the sites ...
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Data page for September 2009
The data page is the financial rates and data complied for the Law Society Gazette by MoneyFacts Group, the UK's largest supplier of savings and mortgage data. ...
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Barristers and the Legal Services Act: will the bar modernise in time? Does it even need to?
It is almost five years since Sir David Clementi rocked the legal establishment with his report on the regulatory framework for legal services. Since then, debate on the product of that report – the Legal Services Act 2007 – and the impact on the profession of new legal disciplinary partnerships ...
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Judge for yourselves
Obiter was privileged to be given a tour of the new Supreme Court building this week, and must admit to being impressed. No longer the dingy and dirty-stoned Middlesex Guildhall that some had muttered would not be an appropriate home for such a ...
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Wings of a dove
Readers may recall that Obiter issued a challenge to readers two weeks ago to show the Ministry of Justice how it could have saved itself £26,000 just by getting a lawyer to design its Supreme Court emblem (above). We are now pleased to announce a lucky winner: Shaheen Hussain ...
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Opportunity knocks
Everyone knows that first impressions are all important. But did you give that any thought before you knocked on the door for that all-important client introduction or job interview? Knock too quietly and you’ll come across as a meek little mouse. Too loud and you’ll imply a ‘negative state of ...