All News articles – Page 1330
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News
Two decades of greed
Amid all the doom and gloom of Jackson et al, perhaps the best thing that has happened to our profession in recent years is the government’s collaboration with the insurance industry orchestrating the complete collapse of the personal injury sector. With headlines suggesting ‘shock’, and announcing redundancies and closures of ...
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News
Inter-firm initiative to promote diversity
Firms need to work together to achieve ‘true change’ in the legal profession’s approach to diversity, according to the co-chairs of a new inter-firm initiative that launches this week. NOTICED has been set up by eight City firms to help make the profession more accessible and ...
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NewsRoundtable: diversity in the law
It is not enought to pay lip service to diversity when progress is so slow
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News
Ministry doublespeak
The embarrassing court interpreter outsourcing saga continues. Courts minister Helen Grant repeats the same old mantra of ‘a dramatic improvement in the interpreter contract’. Who says, exactly? The Ministry of Justice has in all conscience been asked this often enough. When its responses are shorn ...
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News
Edmonds: single legal regulator ‘possible within three years’
Legal Services Board chairman David Edmonds said today that a single rolled-up regulator for solicitors and barristers could be created within three years. Edmonds (pictured) told the House of Commons justice committee that the current framework of multiple regulators for different areas of the legal profession ...
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News
Prepare for the worst, SRA tells struggling firms
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has urged struggling firms to establish a contingency plan for insolvency, as the cost to the profession of interventions increases. The regulator has committed £2.2m to interventions in failed law firms in the first quarter of 2013 – almost £1m more than ...
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News
Hanging on the telephone
News reaches Obiter of a Midlands tug-of-war as the SRA competes with the NHS – for call centre staff. Chief executive Antony Townsend says the SRA contact centre’s decline in performance is partly due to ‘staff attrition’. The problem stems from the SRA’s move to Birmingham, leaving staff who had ...
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News
Repeat offenders ‘should lose right to jury trial’
Serial offenders who shoplift or commit other petty offences should be denied the right to trial by jury, a senior magistrate has said. Such offenders should have their cases heard by magistrates at a cost of around £900 rather than by a jury in the Crown ...
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News
Memory lane
The Law Society’s Gazette, March 1938Road traffic tribunals The Law Society and the Bar Council made joint representations to the Ministry of Transport that the right of audience before Road Traffic Tribunals should be restricted to members of the legal profession and, in certain cases, to ...
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News
North and south
High street practices may be crumbling before our eyes and intervention costs about to cripple the profession, but the legal services scene is not all doom and gloom. Indeed, according to a report published today by lobbyists TheCityUK, legal services contributed £20.9bn to UK gross domestic ...
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News
Pitch that takes spin
The Ministry of Justice press office was full of good news the other day, pitching the heart-warming story of Chris Grayling saving the family law service provided by the CAB at the Royal Courts of Justice. However the press release didn’t have space to explain ...
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News
Police services
Police attendance at football matches – Defendant police force providing police services in certain identified streets and public areas beyond stadium and areas owned and controlled by claimant football club (the extended footprint) Leeds United Football Club v Chief ...
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News
ATE insurers are gearing up for 1 April
If you are an after-the-event insurer, you are probably rather busy right now. Solicitors are (metaphorically speaking) queuing outside your front door, down the street, round the corner, and in some cases halfway down the M4 to sign their clients up to policies before 1 ...
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News
Nine out of 10 oppose criminal tendering plan
Nearly 90% of solicitors are opposed to price-competitive tendering (PCT) for criminal defence work, a Law Society survey has revealed, after the government announced accelerated plans for its introduction. The online poll of 200 solicitors showed overwhelming opposition to tendering – 89% strongly disagreed or disagreed ...
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News
Virtual firm takes ABS total past 100
A virtual law firm founded by the president of the Law Society has today been granted a licence to become an alternative business structure. Scott-Moncrieff & Associates (SCOMO), run by Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, was added to the list of more than 100 ABSs licensed by the Solicitors ...
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News
250 jobs go as Lawyers2you becomes latest PI casualty
All 250 solicitors and employees of Midlands firm Blakemores, owner of the consumer brand Lawyers2you, were today told to clear their desks and go home after an intervention by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The innovative and fast-growing firm appears to be the latest casualty of a ...
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News
Blakemores intervention will cost up to £3m, managing partner says
The Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) intervention into Midlands firm Blakemores is likely to cost the profession ‘£2-3m’, the firm’s managing partner told the Gazette the day after all 250 members of staff were told to clear their desks. Guy Barnett said that £2-3m was his estimated ...
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News
SRA brings 650 actions for COLP and COFA failures
Enforcement action has started against almost 650 solicitors or firms that failed to complete their compliance officer nominations properly, the Solicitors Regulation Authority revealed today. Antony Townsend, chief executive of the SRA, said action was necessary after a ‘concerning and disappointing’ level of non-co-operation and ...