All News articles – Page 1287
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News
Insurers turn guns on compensation payments
The insurance industry’s campaign for cutting the cost of personal injury claims will not end with the banning of referral fees and the reduction of lawyers’ fixed fees in RTA Portal cases, a leading figure in the insurance industry has indicated. James Dalton, head of ...
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Cold-calling prosecutions planned
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is ready to prosecute up to a dozen more companies who carry out cold-calling and send spam text messages. This week the ICO fined a second company for unlawful marketing techniques to attract personal injury and payment protection insurance claimants. ...
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Grayling flies flag for City law firms
Justice secretary Chris Grayling has announced a renewed drive to export the UK’s legal services as City firms fight to maintain healthy profit margins. Grayling used a speech last week to stress that London was as much as a legal centre as a financial one and ...
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Identity check conundrum
Do the Land Registry rules regarding confirmation of identity spell the end for selling property under a power of attorney? According to Practice Guide 67 and rule 17 of the Land Registration Rules 2003, the chief land registrar is entitled to require evidence of identity of ...
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Press royal charter looks like a winner for lawyers
When one door closes, another opens. So, if your legal aid or PI business looks a little shaky at the moment, have you considered opportunities in media law? The Recognition Panel whose royal charter was approved today in the latest tortuous step of the Leveson process opens up plenty of ...
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Seeing the positives in change
Complaints allowed before we’ve even signed up the client? This can’t be true, you may cry. Well, I’m afraid it is, but behind every threat is an opportunity waiting to be seized. The news that even potential clients can now complain about you, following the ...
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Chancellor cheers conveyancers, as Scots vote on ‘sep rep’
Chancellor George Osborne today cheered conveyancers by announcing in his budget dramatic new measures to boost the housing market. A help-to-buy scheme is to be introduced for prospective purchasers struggling to find mortgage deposits. This will include £3.5bn for shared ...
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Supreme Court holds secret hearing in Mellat case
The Supreme Court has submitted to what its president Lord Neuberger called the ‘unhappy procedure’ of becoming a secret court to consider some of an Iranian bank’s appeal concerning the validity of a 2009 order made against it by HM Treasury. The Treasury claimed that privately ...
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Career opportunities
Obiter hears that skills minister Matthew Hancock rather put his foot in it at last week’s launch of the higher apprenticeship in legal services. The minister waxed lyrical about new possibilities for non-graduate entry into the legal profession, while seemingly unaware of the Chartered Institute ...
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No justice for Zimbabwean campaigner
It’s almost a decade since the Gazette first reported that Zimbabwean human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa had been beaten up and thrown into jail. And now she is behind bars again. The Law Society and the International Bar Association have both called for her immediate release, ...
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Society calls for tribunal fines to fund regulation
The Law Society has proposed that fines imposed at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal be used to fund regulation of the legal profession. Last week the Gazette revealed that almost half of the solicitors fined by the tribunal in recent years had avoided paying those fines in ...
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Call to end ‘mock trials’ in public inquiries
The ‘litigation model’ of public inquiries should be reformed to embrace alternative methods of dialogue and decision-making, according to a report published by the chief executive of the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR). The report’s author, CEDR chief executive Karl Mackie, said that public inquiries ...
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Budget fallout: running into a brick wall
Watching the fallout from every budget is like being transported into the Truman Show. Everyone says the same thing, moves in the same direction and ends up just where they started. Perhaps George Osborne’s tortured economic recovery will end, like Truman, running into a brick wall ...
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Blakemores chief hits out at regulator over shock closure
The managing partner of failed Midlands firm Blakemores accused the Solicitors Regulation Authority of intervening in the firm at the worst possible time last Monday, when the firm was shut down and over 200 solicitors and employees dismissed. But the regulator rebutted Guy Barnett’s claim, ...
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Leveson haunts crime bill
The House of Commons is to vote today (18 March) on amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill that would implement the Leveson proposals on press regulation in conjunction with a royal charter. The vote follows the prime minister’s announcement last week that the Conservatives were ...
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Legal education: bespoke courses
News that Oxford Brookes University is discontinuing its legal practice course (LPC) because a drop in applications means it is no longer viable has sent a shock wave through the legal education market, as we await publication of the much-anticipated Legal Education and Training Review (LETR).
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Insurers blamed for blocking Atteys sale
The interim manager handling the wind-down of Yorkshire firm Atteys has alleged that the successor practice rules (SPR) allowed ‘the professional indemnity insurance (PII) tail to wag the profession’s dog’. The SPR ensure insurance is in place to cover claims against firms that no longer exist, ...
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EU’s struggle with the law around pornography
by Nichi Hodgson, a regular commentator on sexual politics and the law The EU may have successfully banned fish dumping and incandescent light bulbs but porn, it seems, is safe – at least for now.
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A better approach to diversity
Larissa Hutson (4 March) states that one of the statutory responsibilities of the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) is ‘to reach and encourage a wide range of applicants to properly reflect the full diversity of the profession’. The fact that the judiciary does not properly reflect the diversity of the legal ...
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Blakemores appeared to embody many qualities deemed essential for success
One Gazette contributor of portentous mien had this to say about Blakemores: ‘This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’ It might appear tasteless to invoke Churchill’s famous quote in the ...