Latest news – Page 861
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News
Firm breaks new ground by sending PI work to South Africa
Personal injury cases are to be outsourced to South Africa this week in the first trial of its kind, the Gazette has learned. Hertfordshire firm Underwoods has signed a deal with an unnamed practice to test whether road traffic accident (RTA) cases that fall under the ...
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New advice for detainees branded 'illegal' in report
Suspects’ rights to consult a solicitor of their choice have been undermined by potentially illegal reforms to the legal aid process, leading academics said this week. Professors Lee Bridges and Ed Cape, of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College, London, accused ...
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Wall Street task force
The American Bar Association (ABA) is to establish a high-level task force on financial services regulation in response to the crisis on Wall Street. In an exclusive interview with the Gazette, President Tommy Wells said the initiative is partly aimed at defending the principle of ...
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First year of OPG dogged by delays and disruption
A damning report into the first 12 months of the body charged with protecting people lacking mental capacity to make decisions for themselves has revealed a track record of delays, inaccurate information and inefficiency. The body, the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG), came into being ...
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Online complaints plan on hold
Controversial plans to publish complaints against solicitors online have been shelved. In a long-awaited decision, the Legal Complaints Service (LCS) this week said it still favours the idea – but passed responsibility for any scheme to its successor body, which comes into being in 2010.
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Legal aid a 'cottage industry'
Government policies are creating a ‘cottage industry’ of legal aid provision, with large firms being driven out of the market, solicitors warned this week as a major firm shed its bulk criminal legal aid practice. Hickman & Rose, whose managing partner Jane Hickman is a ...
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Blue collar
District judges sported their new Betty Jackson-designed robes as they processed from Westminster Abbey to the judges’ breakfast in the Palace of Westminster to mark the opening of the legal year last week. To fit in with their judicial colleagues they wore barristers’ wigs for the occasion, but these will ...
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Legal aid leads Europe
England and Wales has fewer courts per head of population than Belgium, Ireland or the Russian Federation, but spends at least four times more on legal aid than any other Council of Europe jurisdiction, an official survey reveals this week. The Council’s European Commission for the ...
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Call for ban over HIPs
An investigation that exposed home information packs (HIPs) as flawed has prompted calls for insurance-backed personal searches to be banned. Birmingham Trading Standards inspected HIPs at 15 estate agents, randomly selecting six packs for scrutiny. Five contained false or misleading search information. ...
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Banks silent over client money
Confused solicitors have called on the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) to clarify what would happen if a bank’s collapse wiped out pooled client money. At the end of September, the FSCS told the Gazette that, as long as solicitors told their bank they were depositing ...
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Litigation cash woe
Increased demand for litigation funding amid the current financial crisis may not be met because backers are taking on more lucrative work, an expert has warned. Hedge funds and private equity houses – which were providing more and more cash to the emerging third-party funding market ...
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Franchising, construction, acquisitions and investments
Toy story: City firm Field Fisher Waterhouse advised toy retailer Hamleys on a franchising deal that will allow it to open up to 20 stores in India. The franchise will be run and operated by a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, India’s largest private ...
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Swings and roundabouts?
Vulnerable defendants are in danger of missing out in representation because of funding regime for Crown Court work. I feel the need to share my concerns about an anomaly with the new funding regime for Crown Court work.
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Trivial prosecutions
I refer to the front-page article on 18 September, ‘Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal left with backlog of cases’ (see [2008] Gazette, 18 September, 1). I take issue with [SDT president] Anthony Isaac’s view that ‘perhaps in days gone by solicitors were more inclined to hold their hands ...
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Bitter will to swallow
Readers may be aware of a new business model being launched where the legal profession is encouraged to ‘sign up’ to check online computer-generated wills for free. For more complex wills, the lawyer is able to charge for the service – but at no point would the lawyer meet the ...
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Rights slight
I write in response to Roger Smith’s article stating that readers of the Daily Mail ‘are hysterically opposed to human rights’ (see [2008] Gazette, 18 September, 12). This is an insult to any Mail reader. I read the Mail and anyone who knows me will tell you that it is ...
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Firms shut as cover crisis deepens
High street firms are being forced to close because they cannot afford to pay vastly increased professional indemnity insurance (PII) premiums, while hundreds more are destined to end up in the assigned risks pool (ARP), the Gazette has learned.
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LSB chief pledges separation of powers with the Society
Ensuring robust separation between the Law Society and Solicitors Regulation Authority will be a priority of the Legal Services Board, its chairman has promised. In a speech at the Law Society last week, David Edmonds highlighted the weight he places on the proper independence both of ...
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Tory HIPs rethink
The Conservative Party may abandon its pledge to scrap home information packs (HIPs) if elected, their housing special adviser hinted last week. Owen Inskip, adviser to shadow housing minister Grant Shapps, told the National Conveyancing Congress in London that the party’s plan to abolish the controversial ...
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Anger at ‘propaganda’ of MoJ family courts report
Activists have dismissed a Ministry of Justice (MoJ) commissioned survey into family courts’ handling of contact orders as ‘propaganda’. The survey of 11 courts, by Oxford University’s Centre for Family Law and Policy, found that the perception that courts awarded non-resident parents little or no contact ...