All News articles – Page 1324
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News
Society ‘looking at alternatives to client accounts’
The Law Society is looking at whether solicitors still need to have client accounts and what other options could be available to help cut the cost of regulation. Law Society chief executive Desmond Hudson told the Solicitors’ Association of Higher Court Advocates annual conference on Saturday ...
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RTA costs to be cut by £700
The government is set to slash £700 from the fixed recoverable costs for low-level claims handled through the RTA Portal scheme, the Gazette can reveal. According to figures released today by the Ministry of Justice, solicitors running claims valued at up to £10,000 will be able to claim £500 in ...
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Supreme Court justice calls for positive discrimination on the menu
Positive discrimination is the only thing likely to significantly accelerate the rate of progress towards a more diverse judiciary, a Supreme Court judge has suggested. Lord Sumption, who is also a former member of the Judicial Appointments Commission, said positive discrimination to increase the number of ...
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Don’t meddle with education and training, Neuberger warns
The president of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, has warned regulators to hold back from radical change to legal education and training. Neuberger warned that too much emphasis on consumer interests could undermine the rule of law. The Legal and Education Training Review, set up by ...
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The Co-op’s a game-changer
I had the privilege of attending the launch of the Co-operative Legal Services Family Law service at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. It was a fascinating and thought-provoking occasion.
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Last-chance warning on COLPs and COFAs
Hundreds of law firms risk losing their licence to practise within a matter of weeks unless they appoint compliance officers for legal practice (COLPs), and finance and administration (COFAs). Some 400 have still to do so, despite more than three months having elapsed since the 31 July deadline and repeated ...
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Welsh jurisdiction 'cart without a horse'
The case for a separate legal jurisdiction for Wales is ‘considerably weakened’ without devolved responsibility for policing and justice, the nation’s most senior lawyer said tonight. Theo Huckle, counsel general for Wales, said respondents to this year’s Welsh assembly government consultation on a separate jurisdiction had ...
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Exclusivity at the bar
Attendees at the Bar Council’s annual conference were treated to an absolute masterclass in delivery from Lady Justice Rafferty. Delivering the keynote address, Rafferty spoke with poise and dry wit in defence of an elite. The word makes many at the bar shuffle – it does ...
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UK struggling to shake off taint of torture
There they were, side by side in Hatchards bookshop on the very day that the Supreme Court released its judgment in Rahmatullah v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Eliza Manningham-Buller’s Reith Lectures (Securing Freedom, Profile Books) and Ian Cobain’s Cruel Britannia: a secret history of torture (Portobello) ...
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Litigants in person ‘need more support’
A former aviation director who represented himself in court has called for the government and legal profession to do more to help self-represented people. Peter Elliott said he was ‘utterly frightened’ when he first walked into Manchester’s high court four years ago and was reduced to ...
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Poison pen letters
The new regulatory world of indicative behaviours, outcomes and principles may leave some solicitors longing for simpler days when they were just told what to do. Take, for example, the no-nonsense guidance in the professional code of 1974 on the acceptability – or otherwise – ...
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Insolvency
Bankruptcy – Discharge – Release of bankruptcy debts by discharge McRoberts v McRoberts: Chancery Division (Mr Justice Hildyard): 1 November 2012 A discharged bankrupt sought the release of his financial ...
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How To: use social media
The normally sure-footed John Lewis Partnership demonstrated the risks of ‘engaging’ with shoppers through Twitter in September, when its upmarket grocer, Waitrose, urged people to complete the Tweet: ‘I shop at Waitrose because...’. What came back in this open forum was not the anticipated free endorsement of its products by ...
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Roundtable: young guns
It is no bed of roses being a junior lawyer amid the biggest economic downturn since the second world war. Just as it is not easy being ‘junior’, that is to say, young, or in the early stages of trying to forge a career, in any walk of life. The ...
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Local government merger plan
Lawyers in Local Government is likely to be the name of a new body combining Solicitors in Local Government, which represents 4,000 local government lawyers in England and Wales, and the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors. The merger move coincides with the Law Society’s ...
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Government in spectre
A lovely titbit of parliamentary idiosyncrasy from APIL’s House of Commons event last week. Romsey and Southampton North MP Caroline Nokes dropped by to hear from the claimant lobby and revealed she had just come from a meeting with a government minister. ‘He was sitting ...
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European Union
Workers – Freedom of movement – Social security – Income support Saint Prix v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions: Supreme Court (Lords Neuberger P, Mance, Kerr and Reed, Lady Hale): 31 October 2012 ...
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Exception to enforcing foreign judgment
Boris Berezovsky was recently successful in having a £15m claim brought against him by the state-owned Russian airline, Aeroflot, dismissed by Mr Justice Floyd, who gave summary judgment in Berezovsky’s favour on 30 October ([2012] EWHC 3017 (Ch)). Addleshaw Goddard acted for Berezovsky.