All News articles – Page 1283
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News
In the loop
I would like to thank your team for the Daily Gazette updates. I read them after work on my iPad and your articles have helped me plan various strategies for the survival of our practice, while the personal injury and civil litigation worlds seem to be collapsing all around us. ...
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Pay up, please, lawyers
Congratulations to local government lawyers for securing from the Solicitors Regulation Authority a rule change allowing them to charge local charities for legal services. Self-evidently, this is a commercial income-generating arrangement, not a philanthropic endeavour. In the spirit of a level playing field, presumably lawyers ...
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Justice is never reached, only sought
In a week when a new Pope was elected and scientists at Cern in Switzerland grew more certain that the so-called ‘God particle’ or Higgs boson exists, I fell to thinking about the values of our own profession, and where it stands in the spectrum between the two framework terms ...
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Paper jam at the MoJ
If the legal work ever dries up, may Obiter suggest a job in printer repairs? Call-outs from the Ministry of Justice alone will surely make a career change worthwhile. According to our freedom of information request, the number of ‘printer-related incidents’ reported in 2012 in courts ...
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Jackson reforms: trials and tribulation
One could be forgiven for thinking the campaign to halt or defer the main planks of the civil justice reforms devised by Sir Rupert Jackson is still in full swing. To be fair to the refusniks, the impression that all was not settled has been given in part by the ...
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Jackson – an overview
The Jackson reforms, due to take effect 1 April, have met with some controversy and even a degree of bad press. The details are complex; the ultimate effects unclear. The precise wording of some of the measures only became visible when laid before parliament at the end of January, and ...
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Judges ‘ill-prepared’ for Jackson
Judges in the vanguard of the post-Jackson costs management era will go into April armed with just 4.5 hours of training, a quarterly newsletter and a podcast. In a response to a freedom of information request, the Judicial College confirmed that all 728 salaried civil judges ...
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Society sticks to joint representation for homebuyers
Joint representation provides the best value for money for clients, the Law Society of England and Wales said today following a vote by its Scottish counterpart in favour of separate representation. Jonathan Smithers, chair of the Law Society’s conveyancing and land law committee said: ‘The regulatory ...
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If you’re happy and you know it…
With Jackson Day almost upon us and the legal world on the brink of armageddon, it’s nice to know we’re all staying positive. How else to explain the results of a survey that arrived on Obiter’s desk today saying that lawyers are among the happiest workers in the UK. ...
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The joke's on... Grayling?
Obiter’s desk clock is steadily counting down ‘til J-Day, 1 April 2013, when the main chunk of the Jackson civil litigation reforms come into force. That’s not the only notable event of the day: 1 April is also the birthday of our lord chancellor, Chris Grayling. He was born on ...
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Why the fuss over RTA?
I read that Law Society chief executive Desmond Hudson sees the changes in low-value RTA litigation as ‘serious.’ He notes ‘all the spurious talk about fraudulent claims’. I can see his point but, having defended fraudulent insurance claims for the past 16 years, I can assure ...
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Society wins more flexibility for Santander panel firms
Conveyancing firms will continue to be able to act on behalf of Santander while their Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) applications are being considered, the Law Society has announced, following negotiations with the bank. Last year the bank changed the terms of its residential conveyancing panel to ...
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News
Iranian women in exile
I recently returned from Paris where I spoke on behalf of the Law Society at the International Women’s Day conference in support of Iranian women in exile. There are 1,000 Iranian women held in two camps in Iraq, where they have been refugees for 25 years. They are the residents ...
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Probate: establishing the testator’s intention
The rule against double portions is intended to give effect to the presumed intention of parents. It applies where a testator leaves a child a portion by will and then makes a lifetime gift of a portion to that child. The court presumes that a parent would not intend to ...
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Planning for tax-year end
The government has announced that it will be reducing the top rate of tax from 50% to 45% for those on incomes over £150,000. This change, along with forthcoming changes to pensions contribution reliefs, means that you should review the reliefs on offer to make sure you’re minimising your tax ...
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Would you earn more in France?
The Law Society’s Research Unit is in the process of publishing multi-part assessments of the legal services market. The reports often confirm what we already know – for instance, that there are two solicitors’ professions, and aren’t the City types doing well, while those poor devils in the small and ...
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Young dreams
So, what do you want to be when you grow up? According to an official survey of the nation’s children, among 13- and 14-year-olds the most common answer is actor (5.6%) - followed closely by lawyer (4.4%). However, as we grow older and wiser, the stars ...
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SFO doubling Libor investigation team
‘Significant developments’ in the Libor investigation are expected over the next few months, the director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) indicated last night. Addressing the inaugural meeting of the Fraud Lawyers Association (FLA), David Green (pictured) said the SFO is doubling the team working on ...
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The intervention dilemma
There are many challenges facing the legal profession and access to working capital is becoming even more of a major issue. This will be increasingly so as up to £300m is removed from the legal aid budget from March 2013 and as the effects ...
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Delivering the verdict
The mess in which the first Vicky Pryce jury found itself really doesn’t match up to the jury that, not so many years ago, used a Ouija board to reach a verdict in a late-night session in a Brighton hotel, writes James Morton. Nevertheless, it ...