Latest news – Page 625
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News
Oral contracts to be banned in claims clampdown
Claims management companies (CMCs) will be forced to end oral contract arrangements under rules proposed by the Ministry of Justice today. The MoJ’s Claims Management Regulator (the regulator) will insist that CMCs have to agree contracts with clients in writing before any fees can be taken. ...
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Santander puts panel review on hold
Santander has agreed to pause the ongoing quarterly review of its conveyancing panel and postpone the next review as talks with the Law Society over the process continue. The Society contacted the bank earlier this month seeking an urgent meeting to raise concerns over the review. ...
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Investment drive hits profits at Co-op Legal
Operating profits for Co-operative Legal Services (CLS) fell year-on-year by 63% during the first half of 2012, the organisation revealed today. In its half-year financial report, the Co-operative Group says its legal services arm made a profit of £700,000 as it spent heavily on recruitment and expansion. ...
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Petition fights clinical negligence clawback
Campaigners for accident victims have launched a petition to stop a levy being taken from successful claims funded through legal aid. The Ministry of Justice intends to impose the Supplementary Legal Aid Scheme (SLAS) from April 2013, to allow for up to 25% of damages awards ...
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ABSs ‘put 2,000 firms at risk’
More than 2,000 law firms are at risk of failure in the next year because of competition from alternative business structures (ABSs). That is the claim of insolvency trade body R3, after studying data from Bureau van Dijk’s ‘Fame’ database. The figures, which place existing businesses ...
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Eight days a week: a job description not a song
Lawyers and other legal professionals put in the equivalent of eight working days a week, a survey has revealed. And two-fifths of them feel more stressed by work than they did a year ago. In a survey of more than 2,000 British employees, international recruiter Randstad ...
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Davies gets three more years at consumer panel
The Legal Services Board (LSB) today announced the re-appointment of Elisabeth Davies (pictured) as chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel. Davies’s new appointment runs from 1 August 2012 to 31 March 2015. She has been interim chair following the resignation last year of Lady Hayter.
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Irwin Mitchell shows a flush of ABS licences
National firm Irwin Mitchell has today become the first multi-licensed alternative business structure, with five licences covering a range of its business operations.
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We’ll publish all on complaints, LeO states
The Legal Ombudsman has reaffirmed its commitment to making public complaints data about lawyers and firms despite a delay in publication. Chief Ombudsman Adam Sampson (pictured) said the first quarter’s data – including around 900 decisions – will be published ‘sometime in the autumn’.
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MoJ improving – but financial performance ‘unacceptable’, MPs say
The Ministry of Justice is blighted by poor financial management and a lack of expertise for drawing up outsourcing contracts, a select committee states today. A report by the Justice Select Committee says while improvements had been made in structure in the five years since the ...
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Brady advocate bailed following TV revelations
Police have arrested the mental health advocate of Moors murderer Ian Brady following her disclosure that he gave her a letter that may reveal the whereabouts of a child’s body missing since 1964. Jackie Powell, 49, was arrested this morning on suspicion of preventing the burial ...
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American bar closes door on 'lowest common denominator' ABSs
Leading US lawyers have voted down a proposal to rule out all further studies on non-lawyer ownership of firms – while indicating that alternative business structure (ABS) arrangements remain firmly off the agenda for now.
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Title fraud
The Land Registry (LR) claims that property worth an estimated £50m has been ‘saved’ by its fraud prevention measures (see Fighting Fraud). An achievement, indeed, but one for which any tendency to self-congratulate should be tempered by the less flattering statistic that within the space of two years LR’s provision ...
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Surge in demand for law degrees as A-level pupils get results
Two privately owned law schools have bucked the UK-wide trend of fewer students applying for university places by reporting a ‘surge in applications’ for their LL.B law degree courses. Meanwhile, as 335,000 pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland receive their A-level results today, the Joint ...
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Clarke looks again at discount rate deductions
Justice secretary Kenneth Clarke has opened talks with the personal injury sector amidst concerns that claimants are missing out on their rightful compensation. Clarke and his equivalents in Scotland and Northern Ireland are looking again at the discount rate; the amount deducted from settlements on the ...
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High court declines JR of assisted suicide law
The High Court has told two men suffering from ‘locked-in syndrome’ that their legal challenges to the ban on voluntary euthanasia have been rejected. In judgment today, the court said that it recognised that the men’s cases raised difficult ethical, social and legal issues, and expressed ...
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LSB confirms PC fee rises
The Legal Services Board today confirmed its acceptance of higher practising certificate fees for 2013, as agreed by the Law Society’s Council in early July. The practising certificate (PC) fee for 2013 will increase by 5%, from £328 to £344, following a reduction of 23% from 2011 to 2012. ...
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Two-year PII deals gain in popularity as 2013 uncertainty looms
An underwriting agency specialising in two-year insurance deals is targeting £25m of business for this year’s professional indemnity insurance (PII) renewal period. Indemnity Risk Solutions says law firms will be looking for longer-term options in advance of the phasing out next year of the assigned risks ...
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Law Commission takes aim at multiple wildlife statutes
Wildlife law could be modernised to balance the conflicting priorities of managing wildlife for sport with protecting and conserving it under Law Commission proposals published today. The aim is to simplify the current legal framework, which includes statues dating back to the 1831 Game Act, ...
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Selection in state education
In the Gazette of 26 July, Lucinda Moule called for more selection in state education to improve social mobility. She is wrong. International evidence shows that selection depresses social mobility, while increasing segregation and the gap in achievement between rich and poor. Selection never was a ...