Latest news – Page 640
-
News
Red-tape bonfire plan for legal services bureaucracy
The government will today invite the legal profession to identify business-restricting regulations, naming three ‘sector champions’ as intermediaries. In the legal services stage of prime minister David Cameron’s ‘red tape challenge’ the Ministry of Justice has pinpointed more than 150 regulations suitable for scrutiny. Lawyers will ...
-
News
'Self-serving' interpreter figures slammed
The shadow justice minister has criticised as ‘self-serving’ performance data released on the company contracted to provide court interpreters. The data, published by the Ministry of Justice last week, revealed that hundreds of cases were still being disrupted by a shortage of interpreters three months into the contract. ...
-
News
Plaid Cymru hails legal devolution
Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader Elfyn Llwyd has insisted Wales can benefit from a separate legal jurisdiction - despite warnings it may harm the principality’s appeal to business. Llywd told the House of Commons last week that there would be legal and economic advantages to devolving the administration of justice. ...
-
News
Reserved service plea by Society over immigration advice
Immigration advice should become a reserved legal activity to prevent non-authorised persons causing ‘consumer detriment’, the Law Society argues today. In a response to a Legal Services Board discussion paper, the Society offers to help assure quality standards by ‘providing further adjuncts’ to its Immigration ...
-
News
Government move to replace tribunal judges splits profession
Government plans to save time in employment tribunals by using ‘legal officers’ in place of judges appear to have split the profession. One employment specialist described the idea as ‘short-sighted and utterly wrong’, while another told the Gazette that any innovation that ‘allows heads to ...
-
News
Clarke plea on prisons population
Justice secretary Kenneth Clarke has called for a ‘pause’ in prison population growth as the numbers creep closer to the UK’s operational capacity. At a hearing of the Commons Justice Committee last week Clarke described overcrowding in UK prisons as ‘one of the scourges of ...
-
News
Chinese law firm looks to build UK ‘bridge’
A ‘win-win’ relationship forged between UK solicitors and one of China’s largest law firms could see UK practitioners claiming their share of China’s rapidly growing legal services market, the Gazette was told last week.
-
News
Patent court decision 'worth £3bn a year to UK'
The UK legal sector could lose almost £3bn a year if the proposed new European central patents court is not based in London, the Law Society claimed this week.
-
News
Trust in lawyers falling, says consumer panel
Consumer satisfaction with the value for money of legal services has risen over the past year, but trust in lawyers has fallen, according to the second ‘tracker’ survey carried out for the Legal Services Consumer Panel. The YouGov survey showed that satisfaction with the value for ...
-
News
Insurers set for referral to competition watchdog over inflated premiums
Insurance companies are taking advantage of the system to inflate premiums for drivers by £225m a year, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) reports today. The competition watchdog says that after a road traffic accident, insurers of the not-at-fault driver and others, such as brokers, ...
-
News
MoJ answers key QOCS questions
The government has answered some of the fundamental questions about how its new system for transferring the costs burden in personal injury cases will work. Under qualified one-way costs shifting, claimants are intended to be protected from defendants’ costs in most circumstances, even when they lose. ...
-
News
Top firms told to stop cherry-picking from Oxbridge
Law firms are still recruiting from a narrow elite pool of graduates, the government’s independent reviewer on social mobility and child poverty reports today. The Labour former minister Alan Milburn (pictured) said today that access to professions remains dominated by people from wealthy socio-economic backgrounds, ...
-
News
Former City partner gets three years for £1.3m fraud
A former Hogan Lovells partner has been jailed for three years after defrauding his firm of £1.3m. Christopher Grierson (pictured) was sentenced today at Southwark Crown Court after pleading guilty in March to four charges of false accounting. Grierson, who was dismissed by his firm in ...
-
News
Only two solicitors apply for silk round
The number of applications for silk has dropped for the third year running with only two solicitors among the 183 applicants, figures released by the independent selection panel revealed today. In 2011, there were 214 applications, compared with 251 in 2010 which was down from 275 ...
-
News
Quiz your broker on fees, Society urges firms
The Law Society will today publish insurance guidance urging solicitors to exercise their rights and find out exactly what their broker is being paid. The 2012 PII Buyers’ Guide will help solicitors find out from their brokers all the fees and commissions they receive - as ...
-
News
Law-making at decade low
The number of legislative changes last year fell to its lowest in almost a decade, according to figures published yesterday by Sweet & Maxwell. Data highlighted that 99% of the new laws were passed as statutory instruments, without being subjected to full parliamentary scrutiny. ...
-
News
Law Society wary of 'secret justice' plan
Civil liberties groups today dismissed as 'spin' government claims that pre-publication changes to the Justice and Security Bill would protect the public without damaging ‘historic freedoms’ of open justice and accountability. In a concession to critics of a green paper last year, the bill scales back ...
-
News
New Society sections open to non-solicitors
The Law Society has announced that it has set up two new sections with membership open to non-solicitors. The Equality and Diversity (E&D) Section and the Family Section will both launch on 25 June. The E&D Section is open to solicitors practising ...
-
News
Call to halt referral fee ‘auctions’
A personal injury solicitor has accused insurance companies of ‘auctioning cases to the highest bidder’. John Spencer (pictured), director of Spencers Solicitors, said some insurers had conducted referral fee auctions amongst solicitors for bundles of cases. The price tag of these bundles was likely to be ...
-
News
Will-writing and property firms bring ABS total to seven
Two niche firms specialising in will-writing and property respectively have become the latest two organisations to be accepted as alternative business structures (ABSs). Parchment Group, based in Buckinghamshire, and three-partner firm Plainlaw, based in Oxfordshire, had their applications confirmed this week by the Solicitors Regulation Authority ...