Latest news – Page 624
-
News
Desperate PI firms breaking referral fee ban – AXA chief
Personal injury law firms are continuing to pay referral fees for cases weeks after the ban came into force, a leading insurer has alleged. David Fisher, claims technical manager for the UK’s fifth largest motor insurer AXA, told a parliamentary event that existing legislation is not ...
-
News
End-to-end negligence defence practice sets up as ABS
The first multi-disciplinary practice dedicated to defending professional negligence claims has successfully applied to become an alternative business structure. Triton Global Limited will consist of niche defendant firm Robin Simon as well as claims management company Devonshire Claims and loss adjuster firm Walsh PI. ...
-
News
Midlands ABS issues ‘join us’ offer to insurers
A multi-service Midlands firm has used its new alternative business structure licence to issue a direct appeal to insurers to come on board with a joint venture. Shakespeares, a firm with 680 lawyers and staff across the region, said it was ‘ABS-ready’ and looking to team ...
-
News
MoJ plans crackdown on ‘so-called’ experts
Experts whose evidence is ‘not up to scratch’ will be driven out of the family courts by reforms announced today by the Ministry of Justice. It has opened a nine-week consultation on new national standards designed to raise the quality of experts in family courts ...
-
News
Law Society Excellence Awards now open for nomination
The Law Society is inviting legal professionals from across England and Wales to enter the Excellence Awards 2013. ow in its seventh year, and bigger than ever before, the event showcases some of the brightest minds and most innovative firms. ...
-
News
SRA’s popularity slips
Solicitors are less likely to speak positively of the Solicitors Regulation Authority than they were a year ago, a Law Society survey has found. Firms who took part in the 2012/13 winter poll were less likely than a year before to give ‘good’ ratings for the ...
-
News
Criminal legal aid cuts to reach £370m
The Ministry of Justice has confirmed that projected savings of £150m in fee cuts will not, as was expected, count towards required cuts of £220m a year - taking cuts in criminal legal aid to £370m. An official also revealed that the MoJ has no contingency ...
-
News
Economy 'testing access to justice'
Access to justice is being tested by the ‘worst economic situation since world war II’, the president of the Athens bar told a pan-European delegation of lawyers today. In his keynote address, Ioannis Adamopoulos added that no matter how bad the economic climate, it was important ...
-
News
Traffic courts to be set up
Dedicated traffic courts will be established to deal with low-level road traffic offences and free up the courts to deal with more ‘serious and contested’ cases, the government announced today. The new courts follow a pilot in nine areas. The Ministry of Justice said it is ...
-
News
SRA must level the playing field between corporations and law firms
It is heartening to learn that Mr Townsend, chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, urges the promotion of morality and ethics on the part of solicitors, intends to look at governance and conflicts of interest, and says that ownership and the independence of solicitors must not get muddled up.
-
News
Minding our language
We should endeavour to uphold the highest standards of professional integrity expected of a solicitor and officer of the court, and to make the best interests of clients central to our practice of the law.
-
News
PCT: dumbing down
The Ministry of Justice wishes to remove the right of defendants to instruct the solicitor of their choice on the basis that ‘the removal of choice may reduce the extent to which firms offer services above (my emphasis) acceptable levels’. See paragraph 23 of the criminal litigation price competition impact ...
-
News
Family scheme: the right choice
Lucinda Ferguson makes some interesting points on arbitration in her letter ‘Final and binding awards’ (22 April), referring to the relatively new Institute of Family Law Arbitrators (IFLA) scheme.
-
News
Women trailing at magic circle elite
The magic circle’s commitment to diversity will again be called into question after the proportion of women making partner in 2013 fell below 20%. The quintet of UK-based firms appointed just 13 women worldwide out of a total of 73. In last year’s round, ...
-
News
Most criminal firms to snub PCT contracts
Only two of the 25 top-earning criminal legal aid firms will bid for a contract if the government’s current scheme for price-competitive tendering (PCT) is introduced – and more than half would support a boycott, a poll by the Gazette can exclusively reveal. The Gazette this ...
-
News
Gateway aims to help vulnerable
Sexual offending against children by Jimmy Savile has focused attention on how the criminal justice system treats young and vulnerable complainants and witnesses, attorney general Dominic Grieve QC said last week. However, Grieve rejected the idea of dispensing with the adversarial system for cases involving ...
-
News
Lawyers need to ‘network widely’
Corporate counsel who cannot show ‘cultural awareness and affinity’ will fall behind in the competition for senior in-house roles, a leading headhunter has warned. Nicholas Hedley of search consultancy Hedley May told the Law Society’s third annual in-house conference that ‘it is not enough to ...
-
News
HJA rejects Magdalene ‘cash cow’ slurs
A claimant firm that advertised for victims of the Magdalene laundries has rejected accusations it is using the notorious Irish scandal as a ‘cash cow’ for lawyers. London firm Hodge Jones & Allen was criticised in the Irish media after it placed advertisements asking for women ...
-
News
Pre-emption rebuke from Lords
Peers have warned the government to stop relying on a 1945 memorandum to give legal justification for acting in ways that pre-empt parliament. In a report critical of the current government’s behaviour, the House of Lords Constitution Committee says the so-called ‘Ram doctrine’ is ‘misleading ...
-
News
‘Back to basics’ in Brum
The new president of Birmingham Law Society, Allsopp & Co partner Martin Allsopp, does not have a computer on his desk because, he says, he wants the profession to ‘go back to basics’ and talk to clients ‘one-to-one’ again. In a nutshell, that is his ...