Latest news – Page 876
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Law society calls for government to act on HIP fees
The Law Society has called on the government to regulate the home information pack (HIP) industry to protect home buyers from secret referral fees paid to estate agents. Following a claim by a Channel 4 News investigation that pack prices could be inflated by more than ...
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Universities ask City to plug gaps in law faculty funding
Top university law faculties have begun talks with City law firms asking for fresh injections of cash to plug funding gaps, the Gazette has learned. It is understood that law faculties are making special requests for donations beyond firms’ usual contributions.
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Bribery bill will involve no shock tactics, law commissioner says
British companies should not be subjected to ‘extreme’ rules when carrying out business overseas, a Law Commission commissioner told MPs and peers during a two-hour parliamentary hearing on the draft bribery bill. Professor Jeremy Horder told a joint committee charged with scrutinising the bill that ...
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Rock films, floating companies and treatment centres
Juke box Dury: City firm Field Fisher Waterhouse advised debt fund Aegis on financing Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll, a film about the life of pop singer Ian Dury (pictured). Aegis intends to commit $50m (£33m) to film funding in total. Cheltenham firm Wiggin advised the film’s ...
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SRA rethinks compensation fund levy for 2009/10
The Solicitors Regulation Authority board has asked officials to rethink this year’s proposed compensation fund contributions. As the Gazette reports today, a paper considered by the board at its monthly public meeting, in Birmingham, recommended that solicitors holding client money contribute £470 in 2009/10, up ...
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Profits fall at CMS Cameron McKenna
City firm CMS Cameron McKenna reported a 14% fall in profits as it became the first big commercial law firm to release its financial results this year. The decline in profits, from £84m in 2007/08 to £72m for the year to 30 April 2008/09, came as ...
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Law Society looks to strengthen legal ties with Indian firms
Opportunities for Indian and UK firms to work together will increase as a result of the Indian elections, the Law Society has said ahead of it UK-India legal practice conference. The event, which takes place from 1-5 June, will link up visiting Indian law ...
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Law Society condemns best-value tendering pilot
Des Hudson, the Law Society’s chief executive, has added his voice to criticism of plans by the Legal Services Commission to award contracts for legal aid work in police stations by a process of best-value tendering (BVT). In a speech to the Criminal Law Solicitors ...
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Justice minister steps down pending expenses probe
Justice minister Shahid Malik stepped down today amid the furore over MPs’ expenses. This morning, The Daily Telegraph claimed that Malik paid discounted rent at his main home in Dewsbury – which he pays for himself – of less than £100 per week, while at the ...
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Doctor in profit
Derek Peedell casts light on a substantial issue in the governance of the NHS (see [2009] Gazette, 7 May, 11). GPs are publicly funded to meet the entire cost of the provision of GP services to their NHS patients.
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Direct criticism
John Sirodcar makes reference to my review of certain CDS Direct files (see [2009] Gazette, 7 May, 11). He attributes a quote to me which is not in fact entirely correct.
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Closing the gap
I write in response to the comments made by Desmond Browne QC, the chairman of the Bar Council, about the impact of fees on black and minority ethnic (BME) and female lawyers (see [2009] Gazette, 30 April, 3).
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Bar considers action on ‘threat’ posed by solicitor-advocates
The Bar Council has set up a working group to tackle what it calls unfair competition from solicitor-advocates for Crown Court work.
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Radical reforms mooted in Jackson civil justice review
Radical reform of civil justice is on the agenda in the wake of Lord Justice Jackson’s preliminary report on costs. Greater use of fixed costs, an end to recoverability, a conditional legal aid fund (CLAF), a crackdown on referral fees and changes to the cost-shifting rule ...
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QC appointment review rejects proposals for radical change
The former head of the Queen’s Counsel selection panel has rejected Law Society proposals that would have increased the number of solicitors eligible to apply. In a report published last week, Sir Duncan Nichol said that widening access to the current award ‘would run a serious ...
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Research shows mentally ill more likely to be victims of crime
Adults with severe mental health problems are almost 25% more likely to be victims of crime than the general population, a report commissioned by the Ministry of Justice has revealed.
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NOMS IT under fire from MPs
The director general of the National Offender Management Service, Phil Wheatley, was taken to task by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee last week over the service’s IT programme. Edward Leigh MP, the committee’s chairman, told Wheatley that a National Audit Office report on his ...
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France sets out agenda for OLC
Improving consumer confidence in the legal profession will be high on the agenda of the first chair of the Office for Legal Complaints, Elizabeth France, as work starts on how the organisation will be run. ‘Change is needed to improve confidence in the system,’ France ...
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Hunt condemns unregulated legal services providers
The peer tasked by Chancery Lane with reviewing legal regulation has hit out at what he described as the ‘great unwashed’ – unregulated advisers who provide services that solicitors ‘are much better qualified to provide’. Lord Hunt of Wirral was speaking in Manchester ...
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Best value tendering will drive firms out of business, say lawyers
Criminal practitioners have slammed the Legal Services Commission’s ‘reckless’ plans to test best value tendering, saying they will force many firms in the pilot areas out of business. The LSC is consulting on proposals to test the new method of commissioning services in police stations and ...