All News articles – Page 1318
-
News
Town and village greens - commercial property
Are town and village greens cherished community spaces? Or malicious and vexatious pre-emptors of vital development? This is the first of two articles on town and village greens: this piece considers case law; the next will consider proposals for reform. At common law, a green is equivalent to a special ...
-
News
Call time on court shortcomings
I am writing to ask if your other readers feel the same about the centralisation of the money claims court process.
-
News
‘Oppressive’ employment litigants costs call
‘Oppressive’ litigants in employment tribunal cases should have punitive costs awarded against them, the Law Society has said in its response to a review of tribunal rules. The Society also criticised the review’s proposed scrapping of the £20,000 cap on awards and called for provisions to ...
-
News
Family lawyers losing business
Could family lawyers be doing more to win business? The findings of a YouGov poll published last week to coincide with the government’s launch of a web app to provide advice to separating couples suggest they could. The survey showed that more than half (52%) of ...
-
News
The Brazilian legal market
Commercial firms seeking new frontiers might want to board the next plane to Brazil, if they have not already done so. The country is growing rapidly and is now the sixth largest economy in the world, with a GDP per head bigger than India or China. Brazil has a population ...
-
News
Egypt judges boycott constitution vote
Judges in Egypt have refused to oversee a vote on the country’s new draft constitution announced by president Mohamed Morsi. The Judges’ Club’s decision follows a confrontation between Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court and Islamist supporters of Morsi. The court said it was suspending its work after ...
-
News
SRA approves compliance officers
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has confirmed the first set of approved compliance officers for legal practice, and finance and administration. About 5,000, just over 40% of the total, have been notified. Notifications of approval will continue to be sent to firms until 31 December. The new compliance officers will take ...
-
News
App lost in translation
I started reading the article in this week’s Gazette entitled ‘Release an app’, but abandoned it when I hit the following sentence: ‘Further critical success factors include: determining and engaging key internal and external stakeholders to deliver a user-focused product, and developing appropriate analytics and key performance indicators to measure ...
-
News
Agony aunt rescues app
When the Department for Work and Pensions unveiled its web app to help separating parents get advice without paying for pesky lawyers, it realised that the minister responsible, Steve Webb, was not an A-list draw. (No doubt he is famous in Thornbury & Yate.) Bravely, in the week of the ...
-
News
Costly battle of finding advice
As a solicitor with 16 years’ experience in special educational needs law, I must respond to Lord McNally’s assumption that the education lawyer who had had a client for 11 years was possibly not giving the right advice.
-
News
Trade union giant Thompsons is latest ABS
Trade union personal injury firm Thompsons has become one of the biggest practices yet to be licensed as an alternative business structure. The Solicitors Regulation Authority today confirmed the firm’s application had been successful, along with that of Thompsons-owned subsidiary firm BBH Legal. ...
-
News
Voluntary sector should be able to charge - LSB
Not-for-profit groups should be allowed to charge for provision of legal services, the Legal Services Board has said. The super-regulator wants the Solicitors Regulation Authority urgently to remove the current ban on charging. In a response to the consultation on regulation of ...
-
News
Connect2Law chief vows to create ‘leading’ UK brand
Legal referral and support network Connect2Law has announced the heavyweight appointment of David Jabbari to the new role of chief executive. Jabbari (pictured) will join the executive board and become a partner at Pannone, which established Connect2Law in 2001. Jabbari was until recently chief operating ...
-
News
Family mediation scheme extended
Membership of the Law Society’s family mediation scheme will be extended to all qualified family mediators from April. Currently membership is restricted to solicitors and fellows of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives. From April, mediators competence-assessed by the Family Mediation Council will be able to ...
-
News
Smaller law firms buck trend with income rise
Smaller legal firms have reported a rise in fee income despite the depressed economy – with residential conveyancing up in the usually weak third quarter of the calendar year. The second quarterly benchmarking survey from the Law Society’s Law Management Section shows a 7.4% increase in ...
-
News
ShelterBox Trust appeal
Can I make an unashamed plea to the Gazette’s readers? ShelterBox Trust is a substantial UK charity which delivers emergency shelter and basic utensils in times of disaster. In the last 10 years we have assisted more than 1.2 million people, saved countless numbers of lives and responded in over ...
-
News
Online advice: more out of less
An independent commission, launched on Monday, will look at how to develop strategies to cope with the impending cuts to public funding for legal aid. The chair of this commission, Lord Low, has been reported as saying that this will be about getting ‘more out of less’. ...
-
News
LSB ‘still needed’, government tells the Lords
The government has dismissed peers’ calls for the urgent scaling back of the Legal Services Board and described current arrangements as ‘fit for purpose’. Baroness Deech, chair of the Bar ...