All News articles – Page 1280
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News
DLA Piper’s Unicef pledge
International law firm DLA Piper has announced a £980,000 partnership over three years with the United Nations Childrens Fund (Unicef) to help it expand its global child justice work, and ensure that children coming into contact with the law are better served and protected.
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Fighting talk from PI firms despite Jackson
Surviving personal injury firms say they will emerge from bruising civil litigation reforms stronger than ever, despite gloomy forecasts for the sector. The Jackson reforms and this month’s 60% cut in fixed fees through the RTA Portal have forced many firms to make redundancies and reduce ...
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MoJ cuts driven by Treasury demands
The Treasury played a key role in cajoling justice ministers to push ahead with civil litigation reforms, an influential House of Commons committee report has suggested. A public accounts committee report into the Whole of Government Accounts (WGA), which groups together departmental financial statements for the ...
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MoJ unveils tendering plans for criminal defence
Defendants will lose the right to choose their lawyer and instead be allocated a representative, under government plans to introduce price-competitive tendering (PCT) for criminal defence services. Details of the proposed PCT model were published for consultation today, together with a raft of other measures designed ...
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Shadowing a High Court judge
Taking part in the Judicial Work Shadowing Scheme (JWSS), I was to learn, represents a remarkable insight into the workings of the High Court from the judiciary’s perspective. Having arrived at the Royal Courts of Justice, at the Rolls Building, I was greeted by a chancery associate and shown to ...
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Getting to grips with costs
As the recent ‘Trials and tribulation’ article on the Jackson reforms pointed out, predicting and controlling costs is at the heart of the reforms. Thoughts though now need to turn to the immediate requirements under the new system.
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Pupils in the dock as law comes to life
Imagine the scene: fresh-faced school kids, brows furrowed, wrestling with definitions such as: ‘Appropriation: any assumption by a person of the rights of an owner amounts to an appropriation, and this includes, where he has come by the property (innocently or not) without stealing it, any later assumption of a ...
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New code of conduct for CMCs
Claims management companies will have to agree contracts in writing with their clients before taking fees, the Ministry of Justice announced today. The MoJ’s claims management regulator published new conduct rules – coming into force from this summer – in its response to a consultation on ...
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Customers or clients?
Believe it or not, being chief Legal Ombudsman does not lend itself to fan mail. On the contrary, when a letter or email arrives – looking insidiously like private correspondence from a lawyer – my natural inclination is to mull over what I might have said recently in the press ...
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Solicitors must comply with stringent new Civil Procedure Rules
by District Judge Harold Godwin, president of the Association of Her Majesty’s District Judges The introduction of The Civil Procedure (Amendment) Rules 2013 on 1 April heralded the start of a stringent era of court-led case management, which will likely see many cases struck out for ...
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Special treatment for the City
Perhaps it is just me, but the amount of TLC afforded by the government to the City seems extraordinarily generous. To begin with we have the implementation of the civil justice reforms. All serious commentators agree that they herald a transfer of wealth from accident victims and their advisers (disproportionately ...
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Identity check
If a new client instructs me on the sale of a property and I have not acted for that person before, then in addition to the normal ID checks and due diligence, I can recommend asking the would-be client if they can tell me in what year they purchased and ...
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TUPE changes set to increase disputes
The Law Society has dismissed government plans to repeal the 2006 Transfer of Undertakings, Protection of Employment (TUPE) regulations on the transfer of ‘service provision’ from one employer to another, arguing that the change would lead to commercial and legal uncertainty and more tribunal disputes. The ...
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Judiciary urges caution on contempt
Proceedings against publishers and jury members should be the very ‘last measure’ taken where contempt of court is alleged, the judiciary has said in its response to a law commission consultation. The response’s authors, Lord Justice Treacy and Mr Justice Tugendhat, said that any measure likely ...
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Catherine, the language warrior
There is a tradition which is stronger on the continent than in the UK, that of the Festschrift or Liber Amicorum. ‘Celebratory book’ is probably the closest in English. For the second time, I have been asked to contribute to one, and it is thoughts about the lawyer in whose ...
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Take on the Winslow case
In Terence Rattigan’s play The Winslow Boy, the most famous barrister of the day is engaged to clear the name of 14-year old Ronnie Winslow, accused of the theft of a five-shilling postal order. The stain on young Winslow’s character is lifted – but at some cost to his family. ...
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Wales broaches support plan
The Welsh government is in talks with the Law Society about providing taxpayers’ money to support new and existing law firms in the country, the Gazette can reveal. Meetings were held last week with a view to the government offering help to domestic firms in ...
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Osborne Clarke ups law school rivalry with BPP switch
South-west firm Osborne Clarke has taken the unusual step of announcing that it is moving the training of its future lawyers from the University of Law (formerly the College of Law) to BPP from autumn 2013. The announcement will add to the considerable rivalry between the ...