All News articles – Page 1278
-
News
Cabinet Office to tackle ‘excessive complexity’ of legislation
The rule of law is among the victims of unnecessarily complex legislation, the government’s chief legislation-drafter warns today. In a report examining the causes of complexity, Richard Heaton, first parliamentary counsel and permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, says the ‘current degree of difficulty’ is neither ...
-
News
Career breaks: return journey
Traditionally, practising lawyers follow a linear career path from trainee to partner. But does a career break, whether from choice (to go travelling, try something new or raise a family) or enforced (through redundancy, illness or addiction) have to break your career? A heavy emphasis on ...
-
News
Barristers to ‘strike’ on Monday
Crown court cases face disruption on Monday as barristers on the northern circuit plan to stay away from court and attend an all-day meeting in protest against the government’s planned changes to criminal legal aid. A spokesman for the circuit said members were balloted this week ...
-
News
Jackson reforms could take a bite out of balance sheets
by Alex Fox, a partner at Manches The Jackson reforms, which came into force on April Fools’ Day, provide that a defendant who rejects a part 36 offer is at risk of paying a penalty of up to £75,000, in addition to the usual interest and ...
-
News
Tendering proposals an ‘attack on justice’
Solicitors this week condemned the government’s proposed criminal legal aid reforms as impractical and an attack on the quality of justice. Richard Atkinson (pictured), chair of the Law Society’s criminal law committee, said plans to introduce price-competitive tendering for criminal defence work are ‘unworkable’ for firms ...
-
News
Silk quits Bar Standards Board in quality assurance protest
A senior silk has resigned from his position on the Bar Standards Board over the regulator’s support for the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA). Jonathan Kinnear QC, who been a senior member of the BSB’s professional conduct committee for the past five years, wrote to ...
-
News
Firms still failing to ask for client feedback, survey shows
Most law firms are failing to get proper feedback from clients after carrying out work for them, new research has found. A YouGov SixthSense survey of more than 2,000 adults found just 20% of those who had used law firms and solicitors in the last three ...
-
News
Arresting development
In the bad old days – which, for the purposes of argument, may be deemed to be the 1950s to the 1970s – justice may not have been certain but it was certainly swift. If he put his mind to it, an individual might appear and ...
-
News
APIL can celebrate survival, if little else
Given that most of the planet has been wiped out by terrifying aliens, the film Independence Day ends on a remarkably happy note. President Bill Pullman rallies his troops and assures them the future is bright. You survived, he tells them, and that’s reason enough to celebrate. Now get digging ...
-
News
Alumni networks make sense
There have been numerous instances in recent times of employees taking to public forums and expressing less-than-glowing opinions about their former employers - and even in some cases going so far as to write a book about them. Views on working conditions are - let’s face it - fairly common ...
-
News
Cutting fees already pared to the bone could be fatal to existing providers
Is it acceptable for the state to dictate who represents a criminal defendant? One cannot help but recall lurid headlines about US public defenders taking on too many cases to effectively defend their clients – or worse, falling asleep at counsel table during a death penalty trial.
-
News
Criminal legal aid reforms restrict client choice
The government’s consultation paper ‘transforming legal aid’ does affect one transformation. It transforms people into mere economic units by denying them the simple human dignity of choice.
-
News
Legal Aid Agency plans for austere year
The Legal Aid Agency has set out its plan for coping with heavy budget cuts in the year ahead. In its first business plan, published today, the agency, which replaced the Legal Services Commission on 1 April, sets out its ambitions for 2013/14. ...
-
News
Trust is ‘key to breaking South Africa legal market’
Long-term relationships are all-important when breaking into the South African legal services market, a UK lawyer has advised on the eve of a Law Society-led delegation’s visit to Cape Town. Kerry Underwood, senior partner of Hertfordshire firm Underwoods, who has been lecturing and practising in South ...
-
News
Grayling achieves the impossible
Criminal solicitors and barristers are slowly getting to grips with the enormity of the legal aid changes proposed by the Ministry of Justice in its consultation last week. Most were stunned by the plans, which went much further than even the most pessimistic had expected and seemed to have been ...
-
News
EU accession to the ECHR will change Euro legal framework
For as long as I have been a legal journalist, I have tried to explain to people that there are two separate European courts run by two unrelated European bodies. The 47-member Council of Europe administers the European Convention on Human Rights and supports a court in Strasbourg that decides ...
-
News
Human rights accession breakthrough
A ‘decisive’ breakthrough has been made in the 33-month-long negotiations on how the EU is to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights. Negotiators for the EU and for the 47 Council of Europe signatories to the convention finalised a draft accession agreement on ...
-
News
ABS delay frustrating for Scottish lawyers
Firms in Scotland are growing increasingly frustrated by delays to the advent of alternative business structures north of the border, according to senior lawyers. The Law Society of Scotland confirmed last week that its plans to be an approved regulator of the new entities are on ...
-
News
Solicitor appears on £3.7m fraud charge
A Cheltenham solicitor and coroner has appeared in court charged with fraud and theft of more than £3.7m. Alan Crickmore, who until December 2012 practised from his firm Alan C Crickmore, was charged with 13 counts of theft, seven counts of fraud by abuse of his ...
-
News
Wednesbury shocker
Spring snow prevented Obiter from realising an ambition to visit Wednesbury, home of the eponymous test of a public body’s reasonableness, during a visit to the West Midlands the other week. However, at the annual weekend school run by Lawyers in Local Government we did bump into a genuine Wednesbury ...