All News articles – Page 1295
-
News
Common law
Water and watercourses – Riparian Right – Extent Moore v British Waterways Board: Court of Appeal, Civil Division: 14 February 2013 The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, held that there ...
-
News
Divorce-related legal complaints most common
Family law accounted for the highest number of complaints dealt with by the Legal Ombudsman last year, a report published today reveals. Of the 7,500 complaints resolved last year, 18% were about divorce or cases related to family law. Residential conveyancing generated the second highest percentage ...
-
News
Fresh controversy over Cobbetts deal
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has rebuffed calls to review its approach to pre-pack sales, amid renewed controversy over the buyout of high-profile law firm casualty Cobbetts by DWF. Last Wednesday, the Gazette exclusively revealed that Cobbetts’ unsecured creditors are set to recoup just 2p in ...
-
News
Nature of Cobbetts deal does raise wider questions
The SRA is not alone in possessing a focus and principles that originated in the good times. Remember when the Financial Services Authority was keen not to hamper financial ‘creativity’?
-
News
Central property search register set for test
Property search information could be available from a single national electronic database if a prototype being developed by the Land Registry is successful. The Registry has announced that seven local authorities will take part in a pilot scheme to see if their local land charge information ...
-
News
Motoring metaphors break down
To BT’s plush auditorium in Newgate Street to hear Damian ‘two desks’ Green, one of our justice ministers, lecture on ‘Criminal justice reform – from justice delayed to justice delivered’. The event was hosted by thinktank Reform, best known for enthusing about private prisons, but ...
-
News
India trade mission boosts contacts
The prime minister has returned from India after a three-day trade mission which included international firm DLA Piper and southern England firm Dutton Gregory. Dutton Gregory head of India group Amarjit Singh said: ‘The size and scope of the delegation was unprecedented and significantly strengthened ...
-
News
Pro bono pressure
My comments on complaints and the pressures of regulation seem to have hit the mark. Thank you for your responses. Strangely no one has written to say ‘let's have more regulation, audits, and KPIs’ or ‘let's make the complaints regime more onerous for us’. I don’t think that is because ...
-
News
Judges begin flexing their Jackson muscles
What with judges’ general dislike of all things costs related, and the latest announcement from the senior judiciary that new costs budgeting rules will not normally apply to disputes of a commercial nature over £2m, one could be forgiven for thinking that our friends on the bench are really not ...
-
News
Off his own bat
On the subject of ministerial perks, you may recall Obiter asked earlier this month where the hospitality register for justice ministers had disappeared to. Well, now it’s up – from July to September 2012. Largely it’s a list of ‘nil return’ next to a bunch ...
-
News
New order at Barclays
In the world of banking and financial services, 1999 was another age. Back in the day, as bankers and regulators grizzled with age may one day recall, international finance was able to weather storms such as the Asian financial crisis, a fall in confidence in Russian investments, and a burst ...
-
News
Handing it to the bar
At last I have discovered why, back in the 1950s, barristers did not shake hands with their instructing solicitors. But then they didn’t have lunch with them either. That was known as ‘hugging the attorney’ and was a disciplinary offence.
-
News
Aviva’s Dickensian justice
Aviva’s self-serving proposal that accident victims should go direct to the at-fault insurer without legal representation calls to mind memorable scenes from Oliver Twist.
-
News
Bulger killers: attorney general is right
The question of how to deal with society’s most undesirable people is one of the most difficult we face. In last week’s excellent Black Mirror TV drama (spoiler alert) the public had turned into voyeuristic vigilantes, replicating a killer’s most heinous act against the perpetrator. It’s ...
-
News
Sixty suitors for troubled Yorkshire firm Atteys
Yorkshire firm Atteys – which last week announced it had given notice of intention to appoint administrators – is to be broken up and sold, the Gazette has learned. Interim chief operating officer Mark Feeney said more than 60 local firms have expressed an interest in ...
-
News
Hundreds of lawyers attack secret trial plans
More than 700 lawyers have signed an open letter calling on the government to drop its ‘dangerous and unnecessary’ plans to extend closed material procedures (CMPs). The letter, published in today’s Daily Mail, says that the proposals for secret courts set out in the Justice and ...
-
News
Time running out for ATE to beat Jackson
Applications for after-the-event insurance may miss the 1 April Jackson deadline if they are not made by next Monday, brokers have warned. Commercial litigation broker The Judge has written to all solicitor clients warning of a backlog of files set to slow down the system in ...
-
News
SRA's assurances on enforcement under fire from super-regulator
The Solicitors Regulation Authority must focus more on performance and legal services consumers than on the theory of policy, an assessment by the Legal Services Board has found. The super-regulator said the SRA had achieved much since it was formed in 2007, but had yet to ...
-
News
Supreme Court appoints three more male judges
Downing Street has today announced the appointment of three male judges to the Supreme Court, leaving Lady Hale the only female judge sitting in the country’s highest court. The new justices are Lord Justice Hughes, Lord Justice Toulson and Lord Hodge. Lord ...
-
News
SRA sticks to its red tape agenda
The board of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) said today it has approved all 10 amendments to the Solicitors Handbook identified in its ‘red tape initiative’.