All News articles – Page 1364
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News
Are you deaf-aware?
My cousin committed suicide, aged 35. He took an overdose and left two children and a wife, but no note. My uncle’s theory was that he killed himself because he was going deaf. ‘Deafness isolates you,’ said my uncle, who himself wore a hearing aid. ‘It’s easy to become lonely ...
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Making Libor claims stick
Libor abuse is the latest of many sticks available to critics with which to flog the banking piñata, but as the Treasury Select Committee circled around former Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond on 5 July to take turns waving it his way, it became clear that the full details of ...
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Solicitors demanding referral fees could be ‘named and shamed’ by bar
Naming and shaming solicitors who seek referral fees for passing work onto barristers has been mooted by the Bar Standards Board in a bid stamp out the practice. The Bar Council has already taken advice on whether referral fees amount to bribes, though that advice has ...
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ABS offers barristers at £75 an hour
A new law firm which promises clients fixed fees and immediate face-to-face meetings with barristers has become the latest alternative business structure (ABS). Red Bar Law was formed in September last year and applied to the Solicitors Regulation Authority for ABS status in January. Today the ...
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‘Common sense’ test proposed for prosecutions
Prosecution decisions would have to be tested for ‘proportionality’ under a proposed revised Code for Crown Prosecutors published by the director of public prosecutions yesterday. The revised, ‘more succinct’, code would supplement the existing public interest test with a question about whether the likely outcome ...
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Deech hits back over bar tribunal ‘collapse’ claim
The chair of the Bar Standards Board (BSB) has defended the process for disciplining barristers following a claim that it is in a ‘state of collapse’ amid allegations of secrecy, maladministration and incompetence. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Lady Deech said: ‘It is totally ...
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Society ‘dismayed’ at AML penalty stance
HM Treasury has decided to retain criminal penalties for breaches of anti-money laundering (AML) regulations and not to exempt even the smallest firms from the administrative burden of compliance. The decisions, published last week in the Treasury’s response to a consultation that began in 2009, have ...
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The incredible shrinking legal aid statistics
Worrying signs that clients could already be finding it harder to access legal advice, even before next year’s legal aid cuts come in to force, emerge from the latest annual statistics from the Legal Services Commission. The LSC’s annual report, published last week, reveals that the ...
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Borders agency slammed for under-performance
Members of Parliament today criticised the UK Border Agency (UKBA) for failing to clear a 276,460 cases backlog - equivalent to the ‘entire population of Newcastle upon Tyne’. The backlog includes 150,000 individuals in the migration refusal pool and 3,900 foreign national prisoners who should have ...
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Utter shambles
Who is in charge of the asylum? The Legal Services Commission’s Jarrow office now routinely mislays correspondence or fails to deal with it for weeks on end. Telephone calls take over 20 minutes to be answered. Even a complaint sent by recorded delivery is not acted ...
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PII special: pooling resources
One of the major challenges we have faced in recent times as a public interest regulator has been to ensure that we have professional indemnity insurance (PII) arrangements in place which provide the required level of consumer protection and are sustainable for the long term.
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PII special: top tips
Over 10,000 firms of solicitors in England and Wales will again be pulling together their applications for professional indemnity insurance (PII) renewal. Preparation is paramount because, as we all know, the 1 October deadline always comes too soon. As has been the case for several years now, insurers remain cautious ...
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Over surcharged
The Gazettedrew attention to the increase in the extent of the ‘victim surcharge’ which is soon to be imposed on those who receive custodial sentences. It is unclear how the government proposes to extract payment from the impecunious defendant who receives a prison sentence. If it ...
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Negligence
Causation - Breach of duty causing or contributing to damage Wilkin-Shaw v Fuller and Kingsley School: Queen's Bench Division (Mr Justice Owen): 28 June 2012 The Queen's Bench Division, ...
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Watch your language
Obiter commends HM Judiciary for the commendable dispatch with which it now distributes judgments to media organisations - a real boon, this. And we have enormous sympathy on those not infrequent occasions when its good intentions fall foul of ever more zealous internet firewalls. So it was that news of ...
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Memory lane
That a tendency towards self-advertisement is a most serious defect in the character of a solicitor has recently been rather forcibly brought home to me. An article of mine on a religious subject appeared in the May issue of our parish magazine. The editor, approving its ...
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Intellectual property
Patent - Infringement - Design HTC Europe Co Ltd v Apple Inc: Chancery Division, Patents Court (Mr Justice Floyd): 4 July 2012 The Chancery Division, Patents Court, held that a ...
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Intellectual property
Interlocutory - Damages not appropriate remedy EMI (IP) Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Group plc: Chancery Division (Mr John Baldwin QC (Sitting as a Deputy Judge of the Chancery Division)): 25 June 2012 ...