Latest news – Page 866
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Care applications fall sparks safety fears
Applications for child care and supervision orders have plummeted by 25% since councils were forced to bear the full cost of court fees, prompting fears that vulnerable children are being inappropriately placed with relatives instead, the Gazette can reveal. Just 1,611 applications were made by councils ...
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Lawyer kicks off FA insurance battle
A sports lawyer is threatening to sue the Football Association (FA) for failing to insure club footballers against loss of earnings arising from injuries, the Gazette can exclusively reveal. The FA requires all clubs to have at least £5m of public liability insurance. However, it leaves ...
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MP warns courts not to 'jump queue'
A UK bill of rights and freedoms should not enable the courts to help individuals ‘jump the queue’ when pursuing proposed new ‘rights such as healthcare and education, the chairman of the joint committee on human rights has told the Gazette.
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Medical costs on the up
The legal cost of defending doctors and other medical professionals against fitness-to-practice investigations by the General Medical Council has increased fifteen-fold, or 31% annually, over the last decade, according to the Medical Defence Union (MDU). In its annual report, the MDU, a charity founded in 1885 ...
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Legal aid recovery threat
A six-figure claim lodged against a solicitor seven years after he gave up practice has raised the spectre of the Legal Services Commission (LSC) aggressively recouping historic legal aid funding, despite a partial amnesty agreed earlier this year. The commission has launched a High Court ...
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British female rowers win bronze at Olympics
Olympic rower Elise Laverick (right), who is set to join City firm Ashurst as a trainee solicitor, powered home to win bronze for Great Britain in the women’s double sculls in Beijing on Saturday alongside Anna Bebington. Laverick fought her way back to fitness after being the victim of a ...
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AWS to canvass members over pay gap
The Association of Women Solicitors (AWS) is to survey all 17,700 of its members in an attempt to identify why female solicitors are paid less than their male counterparts, the Gazette has learned. The Law Society’s Strategic Research Unit pay survey, published in May, revealed that ...
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Cartel case approaches
An innovative model for funding ‘risk-free’ group actions against business cartels could have its first court blooding this autumn, the scheme’s originators said this week. ‘Cartel Key’, launched by collective claimant specialist Cohen Milstein Hausfeld Toll and insurers FirstAssist Legal Protection, will remove a deterrent ...
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MoJ on alert over unregulated firm
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is seeking help in tracking down a claims-handling company that may have based itself overseas in a bid to avoid regulation, amid warnings that solicitors who take referrals from the company could face sanctions.
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SRA 'open to racism charge'
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has left itself ‘open to the charge of institutional racism’ because of its failure to address concerns that it investigates a disproportionate number of black and minority ethnic solicitors (BME), according to a report by former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Lord Ouseley.
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Blunt words from the sharp end
Why should executive directors at the LSC earn so much more than those at the sharp end of legal services? I see that the Legal Services Commission (LSC) is advertising for no less than three executive directors at salaries of up to £140K each, ‘possibly more ...
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Rules & revolution
How extraordinary that the chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority should state, in relation to non-lawyer managers, ‘there is little regulatory sense in requiring, for example, those who have worked within firms and already have a detailed understanding of the accounts rules to go on a prescriptive course'. (see ...
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Supply and demand
For some years now the number of LPC passes (first sitting and after re-sitting) has been around 6,000 each year, while the number of training contracts signed has also been around 6,000. There is some slippage, which probably amounts to a few hundred not finding a training contract and, of ...
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Chancel be a fine thing
The providers of chancel repair searches and insurance have displayed an enviable instinct for business, but some of their advertising is lamentably wide of the mark. ChancelCheck’s paperwork features the west front of Westminster Abbey, which is not a parish church and therefore (perhaps fortunately ...
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Blast from the past
It does worry me when our own professional magazine still thinks that writs exist (‘Solicitor slaps writ on county court’, [2008] Gazette, 24 July, 3), when they were abolished (at least in terms of the issue of an originating action) in 1999 with the introduction of the Civil Procedure Rules ...
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Lawyers targeted in insurance fraud fight
The Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) and Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) are planning a joint crackdown on criminal gangs and solicitors involved in fraudulent insurance scams, the Gazette can reveal. The IFB and APIL have held talks with a view to thrashing out an information-sharing ...
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Costs warning to solicitors over terminating retainers
A solicitor should not terminate his retainer because he disagrees with the client’s legitimate instructions, the High Court ruled last week.
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Call to divide AG's dual role
Parliamentary support for the government’s decision not to split the Attorney General’s legal and political functions has attracted scathing criticism from experts. Last Thursday, the Joint Committee on the Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill published its report that, controversially, ignored the advice of the Justice Committee to ...
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HIPs questionnaire 'biased against solicitors'
The proposed home information pack (HIP) questionnaire has been branded a ‘crude attempt’ to help non-solicitor pack providers and push solicitors out of the conveyancing market. A year after the introduction of the controversial packs, the government has launched a consultation to add an extra document ...
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Victory for firm over client account funds
Irwin Mitchell has won approval to claim funds paid on account even though the client’s finances were later subject to a restraint order. The national firm was acting for a client facing a Revenue & Customs investigation, who paid £5,000 on account of costs into its ...