Latest news – Page 578
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News
Resistance is not futile
The MoJ consultation ‘Transforming Legal Aid: Delivering a more credible and efficient system’ was recently published. The proposals include the removal of legal aid from all prison law matters, save for: sentence length issues that specifically engage article 5 and the right to a review of ongoing detention (basically parole ...
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Flouting the ban
If I remember rightly, referral fees are banned. I am troubled. I hear more than mere anecdotes of telephone calls to referrers from solicitors offering so much up to the end of April, then so much after that, per case. These are solicitors with no existing arrangements with potential referrers. ...
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System crying out for reform
Forgive me for raising a matter affecting the families of murder victims, when we are engrossed in our own future, but it is important. A suspected murderer had gone on the run, hiding away for many weeks. I had represented him before and had no doubt ...
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Rights-forfeit advice
Employees are to be allowed to accept shares in their employer’s business in exchange for surrendering employment rights, following a House of Lords agreement last week. The Lords, which had rejected the plan on two separate occasions, accepted government concessions, including the need for employees to ...
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High Court throws out JR on ‘easyCouncil’
A London council is to proceed with the outsourcing of regulatory services such as building control and land charges after fighting off a High Court challenge. The court today dismissed an application for a judicial review against the London borough of Barnet’s programme to outsource a wide range of services ...
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‘Mayhem’ threat as Wales votes against QASA
Lawyers could cause ‘mayhem’ to the criminal justice system in protest over the government’s legal aid reforms, the leader of the Wales and Chester circuit has warned after barristers in Wales voted unanimously to boycott the controversial quality assessment scheme. Speaking to the Gazette today, Gregory ...
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Saatchi promises safeguards in negligence immunity bill
Advertising magnate Lord Saatchi will today outline how he intends to protect doctors from negligence claims if they innovate in the treatment of cancer patients. In a speech to the Royal Society of Medicine, Saatchi will explain how doctors can be encouraged to innovate without being ...
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Grayling’s prison clampdown is a smokescreen, says association chair
Reforms to prison privileges announced by the justice secretary today have been condemned as ‘cheap shots’ to ‘whip up prejudice’ and create a ‘smokescreen’ to detract from legal aid cuts. The chair of the Association of Prison Lawyers, Andrew Sperling, questioned why Chris Grayling had decided ...
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Small-claims threshold decision in autumn, Grant says
A government decision on the limit of the size of claims handled by the small-claims court will not be made until the autumn, justice minister Helen Grant revealed today. Grant (pictured) said the Ministry of Justice’s response to a public consultation, which closed in March, is ...
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Massive rise in cross-border family disputes
The number of cross-border family legal disputes referred to a UK judge has grown tenfold in a decade and more than doubled in the past two years, according to an organisation set up to facilitate transnational judicial collaboration. The annual report of the Office of the ...
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Society endorses ‘a la carte’ advice – but warns of risks
Family lawyers offering ‘pay as you go’ legal services are warned of the risks they carry and how to avoid them in a practice note published today by the Law Society. The note has been published to assist solicitors seeking to offer a more affordable service ...
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Society urges super-regulator to delay advocacy scheme
The Law Society’s chief executive has urged super-regulator the Legal Services Board to delay implementation of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA), in recognition of the ‘profound shifts and uncertainties’ afflicting criminal practitioners. Within a year the scheme may be ‘meaningless’ to many firms ...
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Stobart to bid for new legal aid contracts
Stobart Group is likely to bid for a contract if the government goes ahead with plans for price-competitive tendering for criminal legal aid, the business confirmed today. Trevor Howarth, group legal director for Stobart Barristers, said the fixed-fee service had been created with changes to ...
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Private equity spurns law firm advances
Law firms will continue to be unattractive to private equity investors until they improve how they present their financial situation and partners invest their own cash, leading investors said yesterday. John Llewellyn-Lloyd, head of professional services at investment bank Espirito Santo, said external investment was the ...
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Two-year consultation bears fruit with updated property forms
The Law Society has produced long-awaited updated property forms designed to make buying and selling homes easier. Following a consultation process that began two years ago, the Property Information Form (TA6) and Fitting and Contents Form (TA10) have been revised. The new ...
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SRA chief Antony Townsend to step down
Antony Townsend, chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority since its inception, is to step down later this year. In a statement this afternoon, Townsend (pictured) described the pace of change at the regulator as ‘relentless’ and the challenges he has faced as ‘formidable’. ...
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Criminal legal aid reforms ‘potentially unlawful’ - Society
The Law Society has called for a complete rethink of the government’s ‘economically unworkable’ and ‘potentially unlawful’ criminal legal aid proposals. In a policy document published online yesterday, the Society said: ‘No amount of tinkering with the system of procurement will solve that fundamental difficulty’ with ...
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Contempt jailings should never be secret, leading judges warn
No one found guilty of contempt should be jailed in secret, two of the country’s most senior judges have declared in a strong stand for open justice. The lord chief justice Lord Judge (pictured) and Sir James Munby, who is both head of the High Court’s ...
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‘Clients’ are owed a fiduciary duty of care
It may be a matter of semantics, but to a solicitor there is a distinction of substance between the concepts of ‘customer’ and ‘client’. All clients are by definition also ‘customers’ and deserve a level of service that recognises commercial realities, including increasing competition from the nationals who are better ...
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‘Final and binding’ awards in family law
Dennis Sheridan’s article on family law arbitration sets out the key benefits of the new Institute of Family Law Arbitrators (IFLA) scheme, but risks being dangerously misleading in one respect, namely that ‘awards’ made under the scheme are ‘final and binding’. More worryingly, he makes this claim in relating what ...