Latest news – Page 759
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News
Midlands merger creates £30m turnover practice
Birmingham firm Shakespeare Putsman and Nottingham firm Berryman will merge to create a Midlands practice with £30m in combined turnover. The firm will employ 440 people across the East and West Midlands. Shakespeare Putsman merged with Stratford firm Needham & James in ...
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Redundancies predicted over family legal aid tender
Some 90% of family lawyers think the legal aid tender result will lead to widespread redundancies across the profession, according to a survey of Resolution members. The poll also showed that 86% of respondents whose firms were unsuccessful in the tender have appealed. ...
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Lack of capital putting firms at risk of Halliwells-style collapse
The legal market could see another law firm fall in a Halliwells-style collapse in the next 12 months due to lack of capital and high property costs, experts have told the Gazette. Accountants also warned that the demise of the north-west firm may make it more ...
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Law Society opens PII helpline
The Law Society today opened its professional indemnity insurance (PII) helpline to help steer solicitors through this year’s renewals season. The Society said that the free helpline ‘will support solicitors having difficulties with professional indemnity insurance during the renewal period’. The Law ...
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Baker & McKenzie reports profits boost
The London office of US and City firm Baker & McKenzie has upped its partner profits by more than half, the firm reported yesterday. Average profits per equity partner (PEP) shot up 56% to £650,000 for the year ending 30 June 2010, from £418,000 for the ...
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Terror laws overused by police, research suggests
Less than 4% of people arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 were convicted of terrorism-related offences in 2009, new research has found. Just eight people were convicted out of 207 arrests made under the act in 2009, according to Home Office statistics analysed by legal information ...
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Firms await result of family tender appeals
Hundreds of legal aid solicitors are currently awaiting the outcome of the Legal Services Commission’s appeals process for family legal aid contracts. The deadline for submitting appeals was 6 August, and the LSC has 28 days to process the appeals.
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Conveyancers should be free to act for both sides, consumer panel says
The Legal Services Consumer Panel has called for the Solicitors Regulation Authority to scrap the conduct provisions that prevent a solicitor from acting for both seller and purchaser, and for both lender and borrower in a conveyancing transaction. Responding to the SRA’s current consultation on its ...
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Gazette survey on firms’ recovery from recession
The Gazette is asking solicitors to participate in a survey about how law firms are recovering from the economic crisis. In association with the Gazette, Wesleyan for Lawyers, part of a financial services mutual, is conducting a profession-wide survey examining how the financial crisis has ...
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Advocates to face tougher regulation under new proposals
Solicitor-advocates and barristers could be forced to work for longer in the lower courts before being granted higher court rights, under proposals put forward by the Joint Advocacy Group (JAG). At present, solicitors can appear in the higher courts after completing the Higher Rights of Audience ...
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Irish solicitors take court action over transfer rights
Irish solicitors have taken the Solicitors Regulation Authority and Legal Services Board to court over the regulators’ decision to take away their automatic right to practise in England and Wales. According to reports in Ireland’s Sunday Business Post, the Irish Law Society has issued High Court ...
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OFT seeking costs analysis over will regulation
The Office of Fair Trading is not opposed to will-writing becoming a reserved activity, but is seeking a costs benefit assessment before there is any extension of regulation in the field, it has told the Legal Services Board. Speaking at a recent LSB seminar on the ...
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Firm oversteps ABS rules in outsourcing deal
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has found that Bradford, Glasgow and Newcastle firm Optima Legal overstepped the rules on alternative business structures (ABSs) in an arrangement with outsourcer Capita. Publishing an investigation into the agreement, the SRA said that ‘while Optima Legal’s original outsourcing and funding arrangements ...
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MoJ to slash £2bn from its budget
The Ministry of Justice will slash £2bn from its £9bn budget in order to meet government spending targets, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) has claimed. Citing a letter understood to have been circulated to MoJ senior staff today, the PCS estimated that around 15,000 ...
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Scrapping personal search fee will ‘benefit no one’, warn conveyancers
The government’s decision to scrap the fee for personal searches of the local land charges register will benefit no one and will add to the financial pressure on local government, lawyers have warned. Housing minister Grant Shapps announced last week that the government will abolish the ...
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Research shows ‘incompetence’ in will-writing
Two-thirds of trust and estate practitioners have encountered ‘incompetence or dishonesty’ in the will-writing market in the past year, according to research published today. The study has prompted the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP), which conducted the survey, to renew its calls for better ...
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Law Society calls for suspension of family tender result
The Law Society has called on the Legal Services Commission to suspend the implementation of the family legal aid tender round in a letter to its chief executive Carolyn Downs. Law Society chief executive Desmond Hudson said ‘the public interest demands’ that the tender round should ...
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Family judges alarmed over legal aid tender
The head of the family courts has warned the Legal Services Commission that he has been ‘inundated’ by family judges expressing serious concerns over the outcome of the family legal aid tender, in a letter seen by the Gazette. Lord Justice Wall has written to the ...
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Lawyers see 'explosion' in cohabitation cases
The recession has caused an ‘explosion’ in the number of cohabiting couples seeking advice on relationship breakdown, according to family lawyers who have called for the ‘complex’ laws applied to them to be updated. Vanessa Lloyd Platt, founder of London firm Lloyd Platt & Co, said: ...
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LSB approves £428 practising certificate fee
The Legal Services Board has approved the level of the individual practising fee at £428 per solicitor for 2010/11. Solicitors, recognised European lawyers and recognised foreign lawyers (RFL) will pay the individual fee, while their firms will also pay a firm-based fee, which will be calculated ...