All News articles – Page 1271
-
News
Bar: legal aid plans will ‘irreversibly undermine access’
The Bar Council has called on the Ministry of Justice to reconsider its ‘discriminatory’ legal aid cuts that it warns will ‘irreversibly undermine access to justice’ and create a two-tier service. It is urging all barristers to write to their MPs alerting them to the dangers ...
-
News
State must provide ‘genuine access’ – Neuberger’s rebuke to government
The president of the Supreme Court has warned that denying access to the courts could create an exploitative society that might ultimately fail - and he called on lawyers to help ensure the justice system works. Delivering the first Harbour Litigation Funding lecture, Lord Neuberger said ...
-
News
‘Going to court was worse than the abuse’
‘You can’t be certain that you think that it wasn’t possible that you filled in the first side of the form?’ If you struggled for a moment with that question, imagine how it must have felt for a defendant with learning difficulties who was asked it ...
-
News
Commercial property: Energy Act 2011
The Energy Act 2011 contains a clause with potentially severe implications for about 20% of all commercial property. What advice should solicitors dealing with commercial leases give to their clients at this stage? Section 49 of the Energy Act is not yet in force. It states:‘(1) ...
-
News
Wig or the wok?
Congratulations to employment solicitor Larkin Cen, who made it through to last night’s final of MasterChef, despite a kitchen calamity in a previous episode in which his souffle crashed to the floor. Cen has been a solicitor for three years at Morgan Cole in Bristol. ...
-
News
Sentencing
Imprisonment – Length of sentence – Defendants pleading guilty to number of terrorism offence R v Khan and others: Court of Appeal, Criminal Division: 16 April 2013 The Court of ...
-
News
Society targets ‘special relationship’ with US visit
Closer links between UK and US law firms were the focus of a Law Society visit to Washington DC last week.
-
News
Tendering work in politics
Let us not be hasty in condemning price-competitive tendering. It may not be the way forward for criminal defence services, but it could have useful application in other spheres, most obviously in the selection of politicians.
-
News
Tiny misunderstanding
Just when you think the legal profession has finally got its collective head around this internet thingie, there comes a knock-back. A colleague called the Gazette newsdesk the other day to grumble about alleged bias in the selection of readers’ comments for printing on our weekly Feedback pages. ...
-
News
What a way to make a living
Estella Brown of Middlesex firm Goodwins family law has obviously been working 9 to 5 on the potential for appropriate legal mergers. How about the Law Offices of Kevin J. Dolley LLC in St Louis, US, with Jackson Parton Solicitors from London, to make Dolley Parton? Any more marriages made ...
-
News
UKIP’s law and justice policy
What is most notable about UKIP’s 2013 local ‘manifesto’ is not its brevity, but its banality. We know about the dog-whistle scapegoating of ‘immigrants’ and ‘travellers’. What else is there? UKIP believes council tax should go down, tax generally should be ‘as low as possible’ (zero, ...
-
News
Governance threat to M&A
Worries about compliance and governance standards in companies that are takeover targets are having a chilling effect on the international M&A market, a major international study has shown. The study, by the Economist Intelligence Unit for international law firm Baker & McKenzie, says that unless ...
-
News
Model of a modern secretary general
You may wonder what the secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) does all day. This is a proper question, since solicitors contribute to my pay. So here goes, with all events taken from last week. If you want to see how I am ...
-
News
Resistance is not futile
The MoJ consultation ‘Transforming Legal Aid: Delivering a more credible and efficient system’ was recently published. The proposals include the removal of legal aid from all prison law matters, save for: sentence length issues that specifically engage article 5 and the right to a review of ongoing detention (basically parole ...
-
News
PI firms can prosper with right skills, says Graves
Personal injury firms can survive and prosper in the new era of lower fixed fees if they upskill their workforce and filter out more profitable cases, a leading legal consultant has told the Gazette. Lesley Graves (pictured), founder of Citadel Law, said that up to 10% ...
-
News
Facts speak louder than words
Always alert to linguistic trends, Obiter has noted a new euphemism being applied to what Private Eye used to call ‘Ugandan discussions’. It originates in a letter by Lord Justice Leveson dismissing any suggestion of impropriety resulting from the relationship after his inquiry into the press between the inquiry’s second ...
-
News
Do single joint experts work?
The main rationale for using a single joint expert (SJE) is to reduce the costs and delays associated with using expert witnesses on behalf of each of the parties in litigation. This has been in place for a number of years, but experience of SJE appointments confirms that new issues ...
-
News
Lord Judge and eternal vigilance
When you are lord chief justice a spot of self-deprecation tends to go unnoticed. After all, you’ve reached the top of the tree, have an unimpeachable track record and everybody hangs on your every word. Nobody’s going to take seriously your claim that you have made the most stupid observation ...
-
News
SRA sleuths uncover email excuses
Obiter is no stranger to unwanted emails. Every day we get a barrage of useless notifications, updates and newsletters (not counting the Gazette’s daily update, of course). But you might have thought that a practising law firm would open emails with ‘SRA Compliance’ in the sender ...