Latest news – Page 657
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News
Industrial disease wins exemption from CFA cut
Peers in the House of Lords have voted for sufferers of asbestos-related disease to be exempt from reforms to no win, no fee litigation. The House of Lords yesterday agreed two amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill, allowing claimants continued access ...
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Deferred prosecution could come to UK, says Alderman
Legislation to enable US-style deferred prosecutions for corporate crime may feature in the Queen’s speech on 9 May. Richard Alderman (pictured), outgoing director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), said last week that deferred prosecution - under which the authorities and a business agree a ...
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News focus: no to ‘patronising’ quotas
Women lawyers overwhelmingly oppose the introduction of quotas as a tool to help more of them into senior positions in firms, it emerged at an international conference last week. As the proportion of women on boards of FTSE100 companies looks set to pass 25%, the ...
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Concern over new powers to prosecute cartels
Legal specialists have warned that a new anti-competition regime announced by the government today could lower the bar to prosecutions, creating the risk of miscarriages of justice. The reform, proposed by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, would merge the Competition Commission and the ...
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SRA sets back compliance officer deadline
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has postponed the date for firms to nominate compliance officers after another technological delay. The new deadline has not yet been announced. Firms had been expected to put forward two staff members by the end of this month, but with the online ...
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Kettling no violation, ECHR rules
The ‘kettling’ of protesters and others by the Metropolitan Police in 2001 did not violate their human right to liberty and security, the European Court of Human Rights ruled today. The case was brought to the Strasbourg court by a demonstrator and three passers-by who had ...
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Libel reform coming, says McNally
Libel reform should not be delayed by the ‘Leveson tsunami’, the justice minister Lord McNally said today, giving a strong hint that a reform bill would feature in the government’s next legislative programme. ‘I would be immensely disappointed if it wasn’t in the Queen’s speech,’ McNally told a conference organised ...
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ECHR vindicates UK for second time in a week
The UK government has been cleared of human rights violations for the second time this week, following a ruling by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights that by suspending a doctor from practice it had not violated his right to ‘peaceful enjoyment of possessions’.
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Law Society slams barristers’ public access plan
Proposals to allow barristers with less than three years' experience to accept work directly from the public without supervision are ‘an abdication of regulatory risk,’ according to the Law Society. Responding to a Bar Standards Board (BSB) consultation on relaxing the public access rules, Chancery Lane called for ‘clear and ...
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Rights commission in disarray following factional splits
Chaos reigns among the members of the commission set up by the prime minister to draft a replacement for the Human Rights Act (HRA), leaked emails and a resignation suggest. According to documents leaked to the press, one Tory member of the commission has accused the ...
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MPs’ caseloads will bear the brunt of legal aid cuts
MPs will face a ‘rising tide of need’ from constituents with unmet legal needs if the government’s legal aid cuts are implemented, according to a report published today by the Young Legal Aid Lawyers (YLAL) group. The study warns that increasing numbers of people are turning ...
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CPS monitor warns of advocacy gap
The Crown Prosecution Service has saved £26m over the past five years by increasing its use of in-house advocates - but done little to improve those advocates’ quality, the CPS inspectorate reports today. In a follow up to its 2009 report on the CPS’s advocacy strategy, ...
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CFA reform will not be retrospective, MoJ says
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) today sought to quell fears that Jackson reforms would be applied retrospectively to cases launched before April 2013. Changes to civil litigation are set to be implemented next year once the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill has been ...
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Government blocks bid for immigration and debt amendments to LASPO
Opponents of the government’s legal aid reforms suffered defeats in two votes last night as peers continued to debate the controversial Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) bill. In the third sitting of the bill’s report stage, the government defeated amendments that would have ...
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Federal court strikes down attempt to overturn ownership rule
A New York personal injury firm has failed in its attempt to overrule the state’s ban on non-lawyer ownership.
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Survey shows top 100 fee income up by 7.2%
Firms just outside the top 25 are prospering more than anyone as fee income continues to rise across the upper echelons of the legal market. The latest quarterly survey by Deloitte of the legal service market - covering the third quarter of 2011/12 - found strongest ...
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Concern at move to make success fee recovery ban retrospective
Alarm has been raised at a move by the government that appears to give the Jackson reforms retrospective effect. Radical changes to the no win, no fee system are due to come into force in April 2013 as part of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment ...
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The justice equation
Stepping on to a single-engine aeroplane from Kathmandu to Pokhara in Nepal, my legal partner Martin Howe and I decided to divert our attention away from the frightening prospect of the flight over the Himalayan mountains by continuing our discussion about the meaning of justice and seeking to create an ...
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Opening doors
In 2010 I attended the Commonwealth Lawyers Association’s regional conference at Abuja, Nigeria and was introduced to the concept of a multi-door court. It seems to me that now the Ministry of Justice has a number of empty courts, the time is right to explore the multi-door concept and possibly ...
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Counting the costs
While not a member of the Law Society, I read the Gazette with great interest, particularly in relation to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill and the extension of the RTA scheme to include employers’ and public liability claims.