All News articles – Page 1300
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News
IT firm offers route round referral fee ban
A legal technology firm is promoting a business plan which it says will allow solicitors to continue working with personal injury referrers. The company, Epoq, has created LegalGo, a free assistance plan that claims management companies distribute to claimants. The CMC signs ...
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RTA claims still high despite referral fee ban
The referral fee ban had little impact on the number of RTA claims, with the number of cases in the immediate aftermath increasing by 27% compared to the year before, the Gazette has learned. Figures published by the RTA Portal Company show that 79,483 claims ...
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The legal profession is on the banks of a Rubicon
This column occasionally quotes Yes Minister, with the excuse that the now antique sitcom is more educational than any politics degree. In The Writing on the Wall, mandarin perm sec Sir Humphrey Appleby advises Jim Hacker of one crackpot policy: ‘Minister, if you are going to do this damn silly ...
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Retreat is not an option, says Legal Services Board
A hands-off approach to regulation is ‘not an option’ for the Legal Services Board, the embattled super-regulator has protested. In a statement on its role timed to coincide with the publication of its annual report, the board conceded that other regulators would prefer it to be ...
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Firms braced for spending squeeze
Top-100 law firms face a squeeze in client legal spending over the next 12 months, because almost all corporate clients who have not yet reviewed instructions and spend plan to do so. The result will be massive consolidation among the magic circle’s chasing pack, according ...
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Breach of contract
Licence agreement being made between publishing company (Bright Star) and defendant permitting defendant to re-package Reader's Digest book edition of 'Wildlife of Britain' Morse v Eaglemoss Publications Ltd: Chancery Division: 7 June 2013 ...
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Who will be our Lehman Brothers?
I was a reporter covering Canary Wharf when Lehman Brothers folded. As a journalist, it was one of those days you dream about – the disgruntled workers willing to tell you everything, the imagery of the staff leaving with hastily packed boxes. (We even found out ...
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A call for whistleblowing strategies
On the 21 June the recently established whistleblowing commission’s consultation examining the effectiveness of existing arrangements for workplace whistleblowing will close. Responses will be summarised by the end of the year and recommendations for change will follow.
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Changes to public law
The pressures on the public purse as much as those of the present Conservative government have brought about yet more radical changes to public law proceedings. To echo the words of Sir James Munby, the president of the Family Division: ‘The family justice system is undergoing the most radical reforms ...
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Data protection: one cheer for Grayling
Chris Grayling is right. Not, of course, over his plan to remove choice of representative from legal aid clients, which flies in the face of his government’s whole strategy for public services, let alone our sense of justice. Where the secretary of state is on the button is his offensive ...
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Small claims track
The likelihood is that the majority of litigators have never ventured down into the basement of the county court where retailers and their embittered customers, and landlords and their carpet-staining former tenants scream out their stories and storm out if they lose. This is the basement which hosts small claims, ...
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News
Ombudsman claims wider territory
The handler of complaints about solicitors wants greater scope to investigate all professional services that have a legal dimension. The Legal Ombudsman today called for a broader approach, to mirror changing consumer behaviour and innovations in industry and legal services. The call ...
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CMS students shape up
To CMS Cameron McKenna, where pupils and students had started the day with entrepreneur James Caan and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg as part of the ‘Opening Doors’ social mobility campaign, before going on to a publisher and a bank.
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News
Support our Turkish colleagues
‘The history of lawyers is the history of society in general.’ That’s my theory anyway, and it can be tested by tracing a country’s trends from what is happening to its lawyers. The ethics-lite market fundamentalism visited upon our profession is a mirror of the country’s history during the Thatcher-Blair ...
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Coming soon – fixed defendant costs in PI
At the end of July, the current protocol for low-value road traffic accident claims will be extended to claims worth up to £25,000, and new protocols will be introduced for employers’ and public liability personal injury claims – draft copies of which have been published. New fixed recoverable fees for ...
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Exclusive: top judges compound Grayling’s PCT woes
Senior judges led by the lord chief justice and master of the rolls have weighed in to the fevered debate about Transforming Legal Aid by issuing their own sharply worded critique of the plans. The 10-strong Judicial Executive Board’s 25-page response to the consultation, seen by ...
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Criminal limit concerns
Like, I suspect, a number of my professional colleagues, I have grave concerns about the sudden emergence of historical sex crimes following the well-publicised Operation Yewtree, set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.
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News
Consumer help
The chair of the Legal Services Board, David Edmonds, has written to all approved regulators urging them to do more to help consumers play a ‘more active, empowered role’ in the legal services market, by providing clear ‘performance information’. It is not appropriate for regulatory bodies ...
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News
Consumer help
The chair of the Legal Services Board, David Edmonds, has written to all approved regulators urging them to do more to help consumers play a ‘more active, empowered role’ in the legal services market, by providing clear ‘performance information’. It is not appropriate for regulatory bodies ...
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News
Victim review will be ‘costly and time-consuming’
Granting victims an automatic right to review Crown Prosecution Service decisions will be ‘costly, time-consuming and add little to the current process’, a prominent solicitor has claimed. Director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer last week announced plans to allow victims and bereaved relatives to review any ...