All News articles – Page 1261
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News
Bar Council faces probe over cab rank ‘interference’
The Legal Services Board is to formally investigate whether the Bar Council breached rules to interfere in a controversial decision affecting the cab rank rule. The investigation follows information provided earlier this year about the council’s role in representing its members. Chris ...
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Don’t bad-mouth the profession, Hudson tells Co-op
Co-operative Legal Services has sought to distance itself from comments reportedly made by its sales and marketing director suggesting that putting the customer first is ‘an alien approach’ for solicitors. Reporting the launch of the Co-op Legal Services’s multi-million-pound TV and radio advertising campaign, Marketing Week ...
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Hodge holds fire on ‘tax avoidance by lawyers’
The Commons public spending watchdog has no plans to call lawyers before its headline-grabbing inquiry into tax avoidance – at least before the summer recess. The public accounts committee, chaired by Margaret Hodge MP, has lacerated representatives from the Big Four accounting firms at recent hearings, ...
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When science doesn’t have the answer
The sad story of the couple found dead in the swimming pool reminded me of one case which forensic science failed to solve. This concerned New Zealand-born Rhodes scholar and scientist Gilbert Stanley Bogle, who was found dead along with his companion, Margaret Chandler, at ...
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Commercial courts (that’s all of them)
The Gazette lays claim to this week’s Mystic Meg award for idle speculation that turned out to be not as idle as a reader might have supposed. An editor’s blog last month fingered HM Courts & Tribunals Service as ripe for privatisation, what with its (largely) ramshackle estate, odd plum ...
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Grayling’s legal aid ignorance
Now the cat is out of the bag. Chris Grayling told Catherine Baksi in her interview with him: ‘I don’t believe that most people who find themselves in our criminal justice system are great connoisseurs of legal skills…’
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Civil legal aid: an attack on those in need
There is a risk that the bad news about the impact of the Transforming Legal Aid proposals on civil legal aid will be buried by criminal practitioners’ (justified) outrage about compulsory competitive tendering. Under the civil proposals, those unable to prove 12 months’ lawful residence ...
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Legal aid: the right to choose
There is an aspect of the current criminal legal aid proposals that ought to be brought to general attention. The proposal to deny the right of choice of lawyer runs contrary to government policy. On 29 March 2012 the prime minister announced that he intended ...
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National protest marks end of legal aid consultation
Lawyers across England and Wales will unite for a 'minute of unity' at 09.59 tomorrow to mark the deadline for responses to the Transforming Legal Aid consultation, which they warn will have a devastating effect on the criminal justice system. The Law Society has backed ...
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Bar regulator condemns legal aid plans
The Ministry of Justice’s ‘muddled’ and ‘fundamentally flawed’ legal aid reforms have been savaged by the bar’s representative and regulatory bodies.
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News
Bar bodies condemn legal aid plans
The Ministry of Justice’s ‘muddled’ and ‘fundamentally flawed’ legal aid reforms have been savaged by the bar’s representative and regulatory bodies.
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News
How to save criminal legal aid
‘First you've got to get mad!’ The words of Peter Finch's character in '70s film The Network. Judging by the stunning attendance at yesterday's Save Legal Aid demo outside the Ministry of Justice – to coincide with the end of the MoJ consultation on price-competitive ...
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Hundreds protest as MoJ swamped by legal aid responses
The Ministry of Justice has received 13,000 responses to its Transforming Legal Aid consultation, it confirmed yesterday, as hundreds of lawyers demonstrated against the proposed cuts outside the ministry’s headquarters in London. The protest, organised by trainees at Tottenham firm Wilson Solicitors, marked the end of ...
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Claims against the NHS set to surge
Clinical negligence cases against the NHS increased by 18% in 2012/13, government figures have revealed. Statistics compiled by the Department for Work and Pensions found there were 16,006 cases registered with the compensation recovery unit last year, compared with 13,517 for 2011/12. ...
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Panel firms named as claims against NHS soar
The Department of Health has announced its roster of defendant panel firms that will share a £400m contract for the NHS in England over the next four years. After a tender process lasting several months, successful bidders were informed this morning. ...
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Stakes raised again as legal aid reforms loom
The profession’s increasingly vociferous campaign against the cuts outlined in the Transforming Legal Aid consultation reached a crescendo last week, ahead of tomorrow’s deadline for responses. Magistrates allege the changes could lead to situations where the only legally qualified person in court is the ...
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In-deed bows out of ABS venture
The ‘cottage industry’ nature of the conveyancing market makes the failure of conveyancing service In-deed Online ‘unsurprising’, the Gazette has been told. AIM-listed In-deed Online announced last week that it is to sell for £1 a law firm alternative business structure (ABS) that it acquired, along ...
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Maclays to axe up to 30 jobs
Anglo-Scottish firm Maclay Murray & Spens has announced a redundancy consultation which will lead to up to 30 job losses. About half of the jobs at risk are fee-earning roles, with the firm's corporate and property practices likely to be most affected. All of MMS’s four ...
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Chancery Lane calls for 28-day police bail limit
The Law Society has called for a statutory 28-day limit on the amount of time suspects are kept on police bail. Over 57,000 people are on police bail in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, according to figures obtained by the BBC. ...
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Growth rate plummets at top 100 firms
Fee income growth achieved by the top 100 UK law firms more than halved in 2012/13, according to financial consultant Deloitte. The country’s leading firms managed a 2.6% increase in revenue for the last financial year, compared with a 6.6% increase in 2011/12. The year was capped off by a ...