Latest news – Page 1792
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Convention on Modern Liberty debate
The need for a British human rights act was one of the few issues of contention to surface at the nationwide Convention on Modern Liberty held last Saturday, writes Michael Cross. Dominic Grieve QC MP (pictured), shadow attorney general, said a future Conservative government would introduce such an act, which ...
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Education review comes out for ‘incremental’ reform
Legal education and training is not ‘fundamentally broken’ but is failing to ensure consistent levels of quality across the profession, a long-awaited pan-profession report says today.
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LETR: business as usual for the bar as report rejects common training
Training for barristers and solicitors is almost certain to remain separate following the Legal Education and Training Review’s rejection of the idea of a common professional course.
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Hopes rise for legal services in EU-US free trade deal
Free trade talks between the EU and US are almost certain to end with agreement freeing up the movement of lawyers, a leading European figure in the campaign to remove barriers has predicted. Louis-Bernard Buchman, chair of the International Legal Services committee of the Council of Bars and Law Societies ...
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Grayling in concession on client choice
The justice secretary has agreed to retain client choice and signalled his support for an alternative tender model proposed by the Law Society, based on a modified version of GP contracts in the NHS.
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Dishonesty reports double as solicitors 'take chances' - SRA
Reports of solicitor dishonesty have almost doubled in the past two years as economic pressures start to bite across the profession, the Solicitors Regulation Authority revealed today.
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Ministry IT costs soar as deadline looms
Numbers of temporary staff working on the Ministry of Justice’s £500m National Offender Management Service (NOMS) IT system have soared as the government rushes to complete projects before the general election, research has revealed. NOMS aims to share data across 125 prisons and 35 probation services. The project is due ...
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SRA to fast track ABS applications
The Solicitors Regulation Authority will fast track alternative business structure applications from firms seeking to bid for new criminal legal aid contracts, it has been revealed. In a letter to the House of Commons Justice Committee, SRA board chair Charles Plant said that ABS applications from non-traditional law firms could ...
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TSol set for major recruitment push
Whitehall’s central legal services provider the Treasury Solicitors Department (TSol) is to recruit 40 lawyers after spending nearly £4.6m on temporary staff through outsourcer Capita, the Gazette can reveal. The recruitment campaign is for advisory, commercial, employment and litigation lawyers at civil service grade 7, with salaries between £47,086 and ...
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Firms still hostile to judicial ambitions
More than half (57%) of solicitors eligible for judicial appointment say that they could not rely on the support of their firms when applying for the bench, according to research to be published by the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC), the Gazette can reveal. In contrast, 80% of barristers are confident ...
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Contact details
Why are addresses and telephone numbers so frequently omitted from email communications (despite the plethora of disclaimers etc attached)? Why in the most elaborate websites is ‘contact us’ the hardest or last thing to find? Why is there a tendency on the part, usually of the most prestigious firms, to ...
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Portal protestors issue letter before action
Personal injury lawyers have started a process that could lead to a judicial review into reforms planned for the Road Traffic Accident Portal next April.
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New portal fees threaten access to justice, says Society
Thousands of personal injury solicitors face uncertain futures after the government unveiled plans to slash fees for road traffic accident work.
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Co-op ABS will help ‘end advice deserts’
Alternative business structures with national spread such as the Co-operative Legal Services will end the problem of ‘advice deserts’, a senior member of the Legal Services Commission has suggested. Ruth Wayte, the LSC’s director of legal and service development, said she was ‘particularly excited by the Co-op’s client focus’.
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Adviser warns on traffic accident portal fees
Major upheaval of the personal injury sector is happening too quickly and without evidence to support it, according to the government’s own adviser on the subject.
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Cool reaction to European patent unification
Leading intellectual property lawyers in the UK have reacted coolly to the unitary patent and unified patent court process approved by the European parliament on Tuesday. ‘No one can doubt that having a single system is, in principle, a good idea,’ said Claire Bennett, partner in international firm DLA Piper's ...
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Fiji rule of law report found in contempt
A Methodist minister in Fiji is awaiting sentencing for contempt after he quoted a Law Society Charity report whose contents were first revealed in the Gazette. The organisation headed by the Reverend Akuila Yabaki, the Citizens’ Constitutional Forum, also faces a crippling fine for ‘scandalising the court’ after its newsletter ...