Latest news – Page 710
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News
Ombudsman confirms move into claims management
Plans for the Legal Ombudsman to handle complaints about claims management companies will benefit consumers and the legal profession, according to the chief ombudsman. Proposals to bring complaints about claims management into the scheme’s remit were confirmed at this week’s meeting of the Office for Legal ...
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DLA’s fixed-price venture chases commercial market
A fixed-price legal services provider today became the first new entrant of the alternative business structure era to enter the commercial market. Riverview Law, backed with funding from global firm DLA Piper, aims to attract every type of client from small and medium-sized businesses to large corporations.
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Litigation changes ‘border on recklessness’, says APIL chief
Rapid change in civil litigation threatens to ‘besiege’ claimant solicitors and their clients, according to the outgoing president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL). David Bott, speaking at the APIL president’s lunch last week, accused the government of ‘recklessness’ in pushing ahead too quickly ...
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ABS aspirant Express announces £3m expansion
Manchester-based personal injury firm Express Solicitors has announced £3m expansion plans and the creation of 40 new jobs in a bid to become an alternative business structure with a £10m turnover within four years. Over the next year, the 12-year-old firm plans to move to a ...
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CFA does not justify departure on interest rate, Neuberger rules
Interest on costs should run from the date of an order rather than the point where costs are agreed, the master of the rolls, Lord Neuberger, has ruled. In a landmark judgment in Simcoe v Jacuzzi Group UK, Neuberger yesterday held that interest on the costs runs from the date ...
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Telecoms giant seeks to become an ABS
Telecoms giant BT is planning a major incursion into the legal services market after applying to become an alternative business structure, the Gazette can reveal. BT Claims, a wholly owned subsidiary, applied last week to the Solicitors Regulation Authority for a licence to become an ABS. ...
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Tuckers offers services to rival firms
Criminal law firm Tuckers is to make its billing, diary management and other back-office operations available to rival firms in an innovative partnering initiative that it hopes will cut operating costs and save lawyers’ jobs.
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Personal injury lawyers meet on Jackson compromise
The executive committee of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers meets today amid member discontent over its proposals for a compromise deal on the Jackson reforms. Last week APIL set out a ‘Plan B’ to offer the government, as the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of ...
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Junior staff forced upon 'life and death' care cases
The soaring number of court applications to take children into care is forcing cash-strapped law firms to use junior and unqualified staff to handle ‘life and death’ cases.
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Law firms ‘are their own competitors’
Law firms lose almost half of potential new clients by mishandling telephone enquiries and most show ‘zero’ sensitivity to a client’s needs, a ‘secret-shopping’ exercise has found. Some 33% of calls to firms were disconnected before they reached a legal adviser and 44% of those which ...
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Survey: in-house woe for magic circle
Pressure on corporate legal budgets eased in 2011, but that failed to halt a three-year decline in the use of magic circle firms. Legal departments instead chose to increase their own headcount, and to make greater use of UK mid-tier law firms, other international firms, the bar and niche firms.
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Setting the date
The announcement by the Sentencing Council on 24 January of a reduction of sentences for those who are drug mules, and not organisers, is long overdue but greatly to be welcomed. The new guideline applies to all offenders aged 18 and over who are sentenced on or after 27 February ...
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Something stinks
So as far as I can make out we, a solicitor’s firm, must now go cap in hand to a licensed conveyancer firm if we want to appeal to get on to the panel of a high street bank. And that licensed conveyancer firm, which is on the panel of ...
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Language barrier
Catherine Baksi is quite right to raise the issue of interpreters, of such concern for so long to those of us in the know. Pro bono (and with any number of colleagues from the defence, the prosecution, the police, the Probation Service, the courts service ...
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Courting disorder
I read with some amusement the article regarding complaints about Salford. Obviously those on high have been thinking for some time about the future of court work in this country. We have been steered away from the courts via the urging of the parties to mediate. ...
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Society in new deal on ARP finance
The Law Society has offered to share equally with insurers up to £60m in liability to cover the cost of the assigned risks pool (ARP).
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On top form
I am just recovering from my first attempt at completing the criminal legal aid application forms CDS 14 and 15 on behalf of my client. That these convoluted affairs come with a 22-page guide to their completion, to extract virtually the same information as their predecessors, says it all.
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Call to account
I read with interest that the SRA had extended its operating hours to deal with the issues arising from this year’s online renewals process. Over the last three days, I have spent nearly two hours waiting on the phone to speak with someone at the SRA ...
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Where credit is due
While the online renewals process for practising certificates was confusing and highly stressful for many of us, the SRA deserves credit for the way in which some of its staff handled individual complaints and concerns.
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Download limit
The letter from the grandly titled ‘Programme Director, CJS Efficiency Programme’ at the CPS poses more questions than it answers. Downloading every case in a court building on to the computer of each prosecutor at a court building on a particular day places those prosecutors under ...