Latest news – Page 670
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‘Grossly overpaid’ interpreters to blame for courts fiasco, says minister
Justice minister Crispin Blunt has blamed the ‘grossly overpaid’ interpreters ‘taking advantage of the system’ for the need to outsource the court contract.
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Stop assessing firms, Law Society tells the LSB
The Law Society has called for the Legal Services Board (LSB) to forget about regulating the legal market and begin downsizing. The Society says most of the reforms in the Legal Services Act are now coming to fruition, with the establishment of a Legal Ombudsman and ...
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Accident waiting to happen
Your feature on work experience made interesting reading. Until a few years ago, I always used to take school students (usually fourth or fifth year) for a week or two. They used to come to court with me and sit in with clients (with clients’ consent ...
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Passing the buck
I was consulted by a client who had become completely lost in the claims management process, and even now I am unsure that I have managed to untangle the complex relationships between the various corporate bodies involved.
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Fair game
Although the most obvious response to the letter from David Enright is that the concept of justice cannot be reduced to a mathematical equation, it is nevertheless true that there are objective criteria that can be considered and evaluated in some way. Therefore the concept may have some merit.
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Simple maths
With reference to David Enright's letter, I do not understand why his ‘equation’ for justice: J = FP+EAOFT is not simply expressed J = FP+EA+OFT ie the element ‘OFT’ (objectively fair tribunal) should be an addend not a denominator.
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Banks face £1bn blizzard of funded suits
Venture capital firms are backing litigation worth up to £1bn against major banks over the alleged misselling of interest rate hedging contracts, the Gazette can reveal. A group of cases identified by the company that has secured the backing of funds for the claims, Norton ...
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Law Society survey to probe wellbeing
Solicitors are to be questioned on how rapid changes to the legal landscape are affecting their state of mind. The Law Society will include research on members’ wellbeing as part of its survey of the membership this summer. A membership board report says the Society should ...
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We’ll cope, says Salford claims centre chief
Managers at the new county court money claims centre in Salford are confident that it will be able to cope with going fully operational on Monday (19 March) despite a barrage of complaints about its service so far. Manager Jason Latham told the Gazette that ...
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PM's adoption reform prompts warning
Lawyers have welcomed the prime minister’s proposal for legislation to speed up the adoption process, but warned that changes could lead to increased legal challenges. An action plan due to be launched yesterday will require local authorities to find adoptive parents within three months, or to place children on the ...
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More time for LDPs to mull ABS options
Hundreds of legal disciplinary practices (LDPs) have been given more time to decide how to approach the new era of legal services regulation. Under the terms of the 2007 Legal Services Act, some 250 LDPs in England and Wales with non-lawyer managers must decide whether ...
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Deech confident about QASA roll-out
The controversial accreditation scheme for advocates has the support of judges and will go ahead, the chair of the Bar Standards Board has said amid a continuing dispute with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
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Unite joins interpreting campaign
Britain’s biggest trade union this week joined a campaign for the Ministry of Justice to bring courtroom interpreting services back in-house from a contract with Applied Language Solutions (ALS). ‘The courts system is descending into chaos, as suspects are not being informed of their rights and ...
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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 ...