Latest news – Page 680
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News
Don’t cut corners, LeO warns firms
Competition from new market entrants is forcing law firms to offer services and prices they cannot hope to deliver, according to the Legal Ombudsman. In his second annual report, Adam Sampson (pictured) raises concerns that under-pressure firms are cutting corners and making unrealistic promises. He ...
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ABS pioneer condemns ‘over-qualification’ in firms
Law firms have for too long relied upon 'closed clubs of equity partners' to keep fees artificially high, a speaker from one of the first wave of alternative business structures told the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) Symposium in Manchester today.
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LSC improvements fail to satisfy auditor
The National Audit Office has qualified the Legal Services Commission’s accounts for the fourth year running due to overpayments made to providers. The LSC’s annual report, published today, revealed a substantial drop in expenditure in 2011-12, in large part reflecting the fact it funded almost a ...
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Djanogly: QOCS applies to all
Qualified one-way costs-shifting (QOCS) will apply to all personal injury claimants no matter what their financial means, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed. In a written ministerial statement today, justice minister Jonathan Djanogly (pictured) said there would be no financial test to determine eligibility. The new ...
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Bar-solicitor divisions ‘music to government’s ears’
Two leading criminal lawyers have called for solicitors and barristers to stop arguing among themselves and unite, to promote their clients' interests and the justice system. President of the London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association Jim Meyer said both branches of the profession are struggling due to ...
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Cuts opponents fuelled by self-interest, says Clarke
The lord chancellor has accepted that not enough progress has been made to increase judicial diversity - and labelled the profession’s lobbying over the legal cuts ‘predictable’ and not client-centred. Talking to Justice director Roger Smith last night in an event hosted by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, ...
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SRA eases insurers’ disclosure rules
Professional indemnity insurers will not be required to tell solicitors if their credit rating changes during the year of cover, regulators have decided. Following lobbying from the insurance industry, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has eased rules regarding insurers’ disclosure. Under the Qualifying Insurer’s Agreement approved earlier ...
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Claims managers get the blame for PI spike
The legal profession has rounded on claims management companies after a sharp spike in personal injury claims following road accidents. Figures from the Institute of Actuaries released this week show the proportion of accidents involving bodily injury rose by 18% last year. This was at a ...
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Freshfields and Linklaters dampen magic circle celebrations
Magic circle rivals Linklaters and Freshfields have recorded modest financial results to end a week of announcements by the UK’s biggest firms.
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Spreading the word
Devon & Somerset Law Society welcomes the president’s call for local law societies to reassess their role. DASLS has just launched its business plan for the next three years. Part of our strategy is to put junior and in-house lawyers at the centre of the plan. We are also committed ...
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Taking a view on gay marriage
I confess to having been taken aback that a committee of the Law Society has responded to the government’s consultation on ‘gay marriage’ at all, but the more so because its response is prefaced by a reference to the Society representing solicitors in England and Wales, thus giving the impression ...
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Partisan position
It was disappointing to read the statement by Law Society president John Wotton expressing, in thoroughly ‘right-on’ terms, the official Society line that it is supporting gay marriage.
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Equality is overdue
I welcome the Law Society’s support for equal marriage for same-sex couples. This measure is overdue. Civil partnership provides same-sex couples with most, but not all, the rights of married couples. Yet it is a ‘separate-but-equal’ institution simply designed to deny full marriage to lesbians ...
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Right message
Camden Community Law Centre was pleased to see the Law Society’s support for equality in the item about same-sex marriage. We congratulate the Society on speaking out. We believe that the Society should speak out on issues of equality in the law. ...
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Closing the door
I have never before, in over 30 years in the law, been moved to write to the Gazette. However, the article by Solicitors Regulation Authority board chair Charles Plant so incensed me that I felt the need to put pen to paper.
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We can’t give up
A Adoki suggests that we should let the system implode, rather than do what we can to mitigate the inevitable and serious adverse consequences that we all recognise will result from legal aid cuts. As chair of the Law Society’s Access to Justice Committee, I cannot agree.
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Plain speaking
Here is a test for your readers. Read aloud, without pause, the full names of the following (all taken from a single edition of the Gazette): LDP, ABS, SDT, RTA, ABI, APIL, CLS, ADR, CBA, CFA, COLP, COFA, ALS, MoJ, LSB, CQS and SRA. Of course, as a profession we ...
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Clarity at a price
It was helpful to refer solicitors to part 3 of the Council of Mortgage Lenders’ Handbook, particularly the set of voluntary sample letters ‘designed to help ensure complete clarity’.
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Stopping extradition
Much has been made of the home secretary’s anger at article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (private and family life), preventing deportations from the UK (see Rights and Wrongs). Article 8 has, however, played little role in extradition cases, at least until the Supreme Court’s important judgment ...
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Site falls short
Joshua Rozenberg, in his article on the National Archives searching for volunteers to update the online statute book thought law librarians would be clamouring to volunteer. What we certainly would do is clamour to correct his statement that ‘legislation.gov.uk is a comprehensive website of primary and secondary legislation to 1267’. ...