Last 3 months headlines – Page 1689
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Youth custody review cuts imprisonment by 42%
A pilot scheme to review youth imprisonment cases has cut the number of custodial sentences by 42%, a study revealed this week. In a joint report on custody panels, the Howard League for Penal Reform and the Local Government Association said the number of young people ...
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Law Society to hire diversity head
The Law Society is proposing to hire a high-profile head of diversity as part of a new framework to promote equality and diversity in the profession. Other measures, expected to be discussed at Council this week, include signing up 100 law firms to a Diversity Charter to be launched this ...
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Herbert Smith managing partner predicts pay freeze
Salaries at City law firms are likely to remain static for some years, Herbert Smith managing partner David Willis (pictured) predicted this week after his firm announced 84 job cuts in London. Salaries will be frozen for all staff except trainees in the firm’s London office ...
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Exhibition celebrates 60 years of legal aid
Sixty years after the birth of legal aid, 83% of the general public say they have little or no knowledge of the scheme, according to new research. To fill the gap, and to mark the anniversary of the passing of the Legal Aid Act in July, the Legal Services Commission ...
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City giant announces job cuts
City firm Herbert Smith will cut up to 84 London staff and freeze salaries across its London office, the firm announced today (20 April). Up to 30 fee-earners will be made redundant as part of the cuts, while the pay freeze, which comes in to force in September, will ...
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Women solicitors: still not equal
The Association of Women Solicitors’ submission to Lord Hunt’s regulation review tells an all-too-familiar story. It describes how women remain ‘underrepresented at senior levels despite making up the majority of new entrants into the profession and.... underrepresented in certain practice areas, particularly those which are rewarded more highly’.
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Taylor Wessing asks staff to buy extra holiday
City firm Taylor Wessing is to cut up to nine associates and nine support staff and has asked all staff to buy extra holiday by means of a salary cut. The firm said today (21 April) that the latter proposal is ‘one of a number of ...
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Next generation
As if grown-up clients weren’t trouble enough, staff at City firm Nabarro have taken to working with 14-year-olds. As part of a corporate social responsibility drive, seven volunteers spent a day with 25 pupils at Westminster Academy to teach them how the commercial world works. The ‘Project Business’ programme aims ...
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Star trekker
When Obiter called Paola Fudakowska, solicitor at City firm Withers, she admitted feeling a bit ropey. ‘We had a fundraiser last night – wine-tasting at Vivat Bacchus.’ Such are the hardships one must suffer on the way to Everest base camp. Fudakowska (pictured) is one ...
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Memory lane
A request for manors; how a solicitor won the Grand National and the Gay news blasphemous libel case from the Gazette archives this week. The Law Society’s Gazette, April 1929 ...
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Speedy recovery
Last week’s Obiter brought you what was almost undoubtedly history’s longest-running lawsuit – Crown v City of London. (James I issued proceedings in 1613 claiming ownership of Smithfield Market. Judgment was given some 379 years later.)
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Why effective representation in police stations is vital
Ed Cape is a solicitor. If you are a criminal practitioner you will know his name – he is an expert on the role of police station duty solicitors. For many years he practised in the Bristol St Paul’s area.
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Law Society President on solicitors in the judiciary
‘Yes, I could have been a judge but I never had the Latin, never had the Latin for the judging. I just never had sufficient of it to get through the rigorous judging exams.’
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LDP disadvantage
The article regarding the introduction of legal disciplinary practices concluded that because only 14 LDPs were up and running on the day the new regime came into force, the profession has ‘snubbed’ the whole idea.
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Mistaken identity
It does not follow, as argued in your Opinion column last week, that ‘solicitors are going to be early adopters of the ID infrastructure, whether they like it or not’.
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Unnecessary veto
Joshua Rozenberg asks if the attorney general should have a power of veto over arrests for war crimes (see [2009] Gazette, 9 April, 7). Such a veto over judicial arrest warrants is unnecessary, given that there is no evidence that this power has been misused by the judiciary.
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Associate prosecutor fears
It is a long time since I practised criminal law, but I have been a civil courts judge for 16 years so I know the value of good advocacy anywhere. I would like to comment on the letter ‘For the defence’ from the chief crown prosecutor Barry Hughes...
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Worm turns on insurance fraud
The first private contempt of court case against a lying third-party personal injury claimant marks a tipping point for the insurance industry.
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Personal injury fraudster found guilty of contempt
In a landmark move against fraudulent personal injury claims, the High Court has found a claimant in contempt of court for exaggerating her injuries. She must now pay her own £125,000 legal bill, a £2,500 fine for contempt and half the defendant’s legal costs.
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KBF executives set up new legal lending firm
Executives behind the Iceland-funded legal lender that collapsed amid last autumn’s banking crisis have launched a new venture, offering a similar service based on what they say is a more robust funding model. Key Business Finance (KBF), which supplied nearly 15% of law firms in ...