All News articles – Page 1302
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News
Civil legal aid: an attack on those in need
There is a risk that the bad news about the impact of the Transforming Legal Aid proposals on civil legal aid will be buried by criminal practitioners’ (justified) outrage about compulsory competitive tendering. Under the civil proposals, those unable to prove 12 months’ lawful residence ...
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Legal aid: the right to choose
There is an aspect of the current criminal legal aid proposals that ought to be brought to general attention. The proposal to deny the right of choice of lawyer runs contrary to government policy. On 29 March 2012 the prime minister announced that he intended ...
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News
National protest marks end of legal aid consultation
Lawyers across England and Wales will unite for a 'minute of unity' at 09.59 tomorrow to mark the deadline for responses to the Transforming Legal Aid consultation, which they warn will have a devastating effect on the criminal justice system. The Law Society has backed ...
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Bar regulator condemns legal aid plans
The Ministry of Justice’s ‘muddled’ and ‘fundamentally flawed’ legal aid reforms have been savaged by the bar’s representative and regulatory bodies.
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News
Bar bodies condemn legal aid plans
The Ministry of Justice’s ‘muddled’ and ‘fundamentally flawed’ legal aid reforms have been savaged by the bar’s representative and regulatory bodies.
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News
How to save criminal legal aid
‘First you've got to get mad!’ The words of Peter Finch's character in '70s film The Network. Judging by the stunning attendance at yesterday's Save Legal Aid demo outside the Ministry of Justice – to coincide with the end of the MoJ consultation on price-competitive ...
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News
Hundreds protest as MoJ swamped by legal aid responses
The Ministry of Justice has received 13,000 responses to its Transforming Legal Aid consultation, it confirmed yesterday, as hundreds of lawyers demonstrated against the proposed cuts outside the ministry’s headquarters in London. The protest, organised by trainees at Tottenham firm Wilson Solicitors, marked the end of ...
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News
Commercial courts (that’s all of them)
The Gazette lays claim to this week’s Mystic Meg award for idle speculation that turned out to be not as idle as a reader might have supposed. An editor’s blog last month fingered HM Courts & Tribunals Service as ripe for privatisation, what with its (largely) ramshackle estate, odd plum ...
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News
When science doesn’t have the answer
The sad story of the couple found dead in the swimming pool reminded me of one case which forensic science failed to solve. This concerned New Zealand-born Rhodes scholar and scientist Gilbert Stanley Bogle, who was found dead along with his companion, Margaret Chandler, at ...
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News
Hodge holds fire on ‘tax avoidance by lawyers’
The Commons public spending watchdog has no plans to call lawyers before its headline-grabbing inquiry into tax avoidance – at least before the summer recess. The public accounts committee, chaired by Margaret Hodge MP, has lacerated representatives from the Big Four accounting firms at recent hearings, ...
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Don’t bad-mouth the profession, Hudson tells Co-op
Co-operative Legal Services has sought to distance itself from comments reportedly made by its sales and marketing director suggesting that putting the customer first is ‘an alien approach’ for solicitors. Reporting the launch of the Co-op Legal Services’s multi-million-pound TV and radio advertising campaign, Marketing Week ...
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Bar Council faces probe over cab rank ‘interference’
The Legal Services Board is to formally investigate whether the Bar Council breached rules to interfere in a controversial decision affecting the cab rank rule. The investigation follows information provided earlier this year about the council’s role in representing its members. Chris ...
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Spelling bee
It was with interest that I noted Obiter’s recent nod to a syntax error on the website of Dynamo Legal (dynamolegal.com), the so-called ‘superbrand’ headed by Alex Mills of BBC’s The Apprentice ‘fame’. Perhaps the young Mr Mills can be excused for the odd gremlin ...
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Best go to Tesco? Er, no
Legal aid lawyers have a belligerent ally in the Guardian’s star columnist Zoe Williams, who directed a withering broadside at the government’s PCT plans last Saturday. Still, quite a few solicitors will have choked on their morning croissant at her revelation that Tesco plans to bid for a contract. Maybe ...
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Blair's lord chancellor reforms ruining constitution
In his admirably lucid and revelatory account of the removal of Lord Irvine from the office of lord chancellor, and the destruction of the office itself, by his ungrateful pupil Tony Blair, Joshua Rozenberg has pinpointed a key moment in our recent legal history.
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Slaughter: further court closures will bring ‘chaos’
Shadow justice minister Andy Slaughter has warned the government that a further round of court closures would be ‘reckless and chaotic’. Speculation is growing that the Ministry of Justice will soon announce at least 80 further court closures – mainly magistrates’ courts – to add to ...
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Inspectors call for streamlined criminal justice process
Inspectors of police service and prosecutors have called for decisive action to streamline the criminal justice process and end ‘the spectre of unnecessary bureaucracy’. In a joint report published today HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) identify factors that create ...
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Co-op Legal Services unveils TV and radio campaign
Co-operative Legal Services kicks off a multi-million-pound advertising campaign today with its first TV and radio advertisements.
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News
Civil procedure: capacity and compromise
Civil Procedure Rule 21.10 provides that where a claim is made by or on behalf of a party who lacks capacity to conduct the proceedings (a child or protected party), no settlement of that claim shall be valid without the approval of the court. The issue before Bean J in ...
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Removal of client choice is a red line - Society
The government’s ‘unworkable and damaging’ planned legal aid changes could push the justice system ‘beyond breaking point to a devastating collapse’, the Law Society has warned in its response to the Ministry of Justice consultation which ends today. Drawing on two sets of independent analyses - ...