All News articles – Page 1257
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News
Memory lane
The Law Society’s Gazette, June 1963Criminal legal aid The interim report on legal aid in criminal appeals published recently by ‘Justice’ was followed almost immediately by the final report of the working party on legal aid in criminal proceedings. Both reports describe the existing facilities quite ...
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RTA ‘industry’
No, Mr Torr, you are wrong. I have received many telephone calls telling me that I have been involved in an accident and offering to give me advice, when there has been no accident at all. I have certainly never ticked a box on a survey that is at all ...
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Indonesia: treasure islands
Indonesia’s rise as a major industrial power is attracting foreign investors and an increasing number of international law firms. South-east Asia’s biggest economy has been expanding steadily over the past decade. Growth was 6.2% in 2012, and although it slowed down in the first quarter of 2013, the archipelago remains ...
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SRA puts a price on extra intervention levy
Each solicitor may have to pay an extra £23 a year in compensation fund contributions to pay for future interventions into failing firms. The Solicitors Regulation Authority has decided to use the compensation fund to meet the estimated £7m budget overspend on interventions this year, occasioned ...
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Professions and industrial workers - vital distinction
It is not just a question of ‘what’s in a name’. There is a real ethical difference between professionals and industrial workers. If society does not recognise this or we, as professionals, do not defend this difference, we are in danger of sliding behind the doors of a Stalinist state.
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Law firms warned on debt recovery
Law firms involved in debt recovery work have been warned by the regulator to ensure they have proper control over what is being done in their name. The Solicitors Regulation Authority has seen an increase in cases where solicitors working with debt recovery companies are in ...
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Crackdown on political lobbyists under fire
The legal profession has warned the government it is fixing its sights on the wrong target with plans for a register of political lobbyists. Downing Street confirmed last week that it wants to create a statutory register, with legislation published within six weeks, following allegations involving ...
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Courts: the US should be a warning
Unfortunately, I did not read John Hyde’s web article ‘What’s so bad about privatising our courts?’ until the comments had closed. However, as a former law student and now a researcher in criminology, I have the following thoughts to offer.
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Thousands of court workers to strike on Monday
More than 16,000 court and Crown Prosecution Service workers will stage a one-day strike on Monday, as campaigners against various government reforms step up their attack. Around 2,500 CPS employees who are members of the Public and Commercial Services Union will stage industrial action on Monday ...
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Victim review will be ‘costly and time-consuming’
Granting victims an automatic right to review Crown Prosecution Service decisions will be ‘costly, time-consuming and add little to the current process’, a prominent solicitor has claimed. Director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer last week announced plans to allow victims and bereaved relatives to review any ...
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Consumer help
The chair of the Legal Services Board, David Edmonds, has written to all approved regulators urging them to do more to help consumers play a ‘more active, empowered role’ in the legal services market, by providing clear ‘performance information’. It is not appropriate for regulatory bodies ...
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Consumer help
The chair of the Legal Services Board, David Edmonds, has written to all approved regulators urging them to do more to help consumers play a ‘more active, empowered role’ in the legal services market, by providing clear ‘performance information’. It is not appropriate for regulatory bodies ...
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Criminal limit concerns
Like, I suspect, a number of my professional colleagues, I have grave concerns about the sudden emergence of historical sex crimes following the well-publicised Operation Yewtree, set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.
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Exclusive: top judges compound Grayling’s PCT woes
Senior judges led by the lord chief justice and master of the rolls have weighed in to the fevered debate about Transforming Legal Aid by issuing their own sharply worded critique of the plans. The 10-strong Judicial Executive Board’s 25-page response to the consultation, seen by ...
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Coming soon – fixed defendant costs in PI
At the end of July, the current protocol for low-value road traffic accident claims will be extended to claims worth up to £25,000, and new protocols will be introduced for employers’ and public liability personal injury claims – draft copies of which have been published. New fixed recoverable fees for ...
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Support our Turkish colleagues
‘The history of lawyers is the history of society in general.’ That’s my theory anyway, and it can be tested by tracing a country’s trends from what is happening to its lawyers. The ethics-lite market fundamentalism visited upon our profession is a mirror of the country’s history during the Thatcher-Blair ...
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CMS students shape up
To CMS Cameron McKenna, where pupils and students had started the day with entrepreneur James Caan and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg as part of the ‘Opening Doors’ social mobility campaign, before going on to a publisher and a bank.
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Small claims track
The likelihood is that the majority of litigators have never ventured down into the basement of the county court where retailers and their embittered customers, and landlords and their carpet-staining former tenants scream out their stories and storm out if they lose. This is the basement which hosts small claims, ...
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Ombudsman claims wider territory
The handler of complaints about solicitors wants greater scope to investigate all professional services that have a legal dimension. The Legal Ombudsman today called for a broader approach, to mirror changing consumer behaviour and innovations in industry and legal services. The call ...
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Data protection: one cheer for Grayling
Chris Grayling is right. Not, of course, over his plan to remove choice of representative from legal aid clients, which flies in the face of his government’s whole strategy for public services, let alone our sense of justice. Where the secretary of state is on the button is his offensive ...