All News articles – Page 1371
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News
Law Society steps up pressure on Fiji
Fiji’s continued refusal to allow foreign scrutiny of its rule of law has come under public criticism from outgoing Law Society president John Wotton. Wotton’s move follows the publication of a highly critical report by the Law Society Charity, first revealed in the Gazette.
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Site falls short
Joshua Rozenberg, in his article on the National Archives searching for volunteers to update the online statute book thought law librarians would be clamouring to volunteer. What we certainly would do is clamour to correct his statement that ‘legislation.gov.uk is a comprehensive website of primary and secondary legislation to 1267’. ...
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Stopping extradition
Much has been made of the home secretary’s anger at article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (private and family life), preventing deportations from the UK (see Rights and Wrongs). Article 8 has, however, played little role in extradition cases, at least until the Supreme Court’s important judgment ...
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Extradition
Extradition hearing - European Arrest Warrant - Defendants’ extradition sought by relevant judicial authority pursuant to European Arrest Warrant HH v Deputy Prosecutor of the Italian Republic, Genoa; PH v Deputy Prosecutor of the Italian Republic, Genoa; F-K (FC) ...
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Equality is overdue
I welcome the Law Society’s support for equal marriage for same-sex couples. This measure is overdue. Civil partnership provides same-sex couples with most, but not all, the rights of married couples. Yet it is a ‘separate-but-equal’ institution simply designed to deny full marriage to lesbians ...
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Redress offered for mis-selling interest rate hedging products is hardly draconian
by Stuart Brothers, a consultant to SRBlegal Business Lawyers. He contributed to the FSA review and briefed a group of MPs on the issue The Financial Services Authority’s review of interest rate hedging products has resulted in an agreement by the four major banks to offer ...
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Legal Ombudsman delays complaints publication
Publication of complaints made to the Legal Ombudsman about solicitors has been deferred, the Gazette can reveal. The ombudsman (LeO) had intended to collate all complaints from the first quarter of the 2012/13 financial year to post firm-by-firm details online this month. But the LeO’s office ...
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Company markets 'first criminal legal insurance policy'
A criminal barrister has formed a company to market what he says is the UK’s first criminal legal insurance policy. For an annual premium of £29.99, the policy provides up to £20,000 worth of cover for a defendant’s means-tested Crown court legal aid contribution or their privately funded legal fees.
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Closing the door
I have never before, in over 30 years in the law, been moved to write to the Gazette. However, the article by Solicitors Regulation Authority board chair Charles Plant so incensed me that I felt the need to put pen to paper.
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Clarity at a price
It was helpful to refer solicitors to part 3 of the Council of Mortgage Lenders’ Handbook, particularly the set of voluntary sample letters ‘designed to help ensure complete clarity’.
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SRA rule change will increase choice but harm consumer
Choice is a wonderful thing. Living near Olympic Park I can currently choose between looking at adverts for Coke or McDonalds. Neither is likely, I imagine, to boost my chances of qualification for the 2016 Games. But what if increased choice means increased access to harmful ...
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Case management; murder; and costs
The decision in R v Newell [2012] EWCA Crim 650 will do much to ease solicitor concerns about incriminating their clients when completing case management forms, whether in the magistrates’ court or at a plea and case management hearing in the Crown court.
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News
We can’t give up
A Adoki suggests that we should let the system implode, rather than do what we can to mitigate the inevitable and serious adverse consequences that we all recognise will result from legal aid cuts. As chair of the Law Society’s Access to Justice Committee, I cannot agree.
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Review of super-regulators calls for more openness
The Legal Services Board and the Office for Legal Complaints should open their board meetings to the public and publish all items of spending over £500, a Ministry of Justice Review has recommended. The report of the first triennial review of bodies established under the 2007 ...
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Indian call for legal liberalisation
India’s top law firms and largest companies are desperate for the country’s legal market to be liberalised, according to new research. A YouGov poll, in association with magic circle firm Allen & Overy, found near-unanimous agreement among more than 300 Indian legal stakeholders. In total, 96% ...
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News focus: who will bring a Libor claim?
Investment bank Liberum Capital estimates that Barclays global exposure to claims arising from staff’s manipulation of the Libor rate could be $6bn - just over a quarter of the bank’s value.
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Entity regulation - solicitors beware!
Amid all the publicity surrounding the introduction of alternative business structures and outcomes-focused regulation, a third part of the revolution in the regulation of legal services has attracted little comment - the move to entity regulation. Yet it is at least as important as either of the other two, and ...
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Best of British?
The government’s reported decision to expunge understanding of the Human Rights Act from the Life in the UK Test for migrants resurrects the old trope about ‘what it means to be British’. It would seem to presuppose monarchist sympathies, at the very least, as applicants will ...
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Bar conviction disclosure rule ‘misguided’
The Law Society and Bar Council have strongly opposed proposals to impose a duty on barristers to disclose clients’ previous convictions. Chancery Lane described as ‘misguided’ a Bar Standards Board suggestion that a barrister should advise a client that they must cease to act if the ...