All News articles – Page 1384
-
News
Red-tape bonfire plan for legal services bureaucracy
The government will today invite the legal profession to identify business-restricting regulations, naming three ‘sector champions’ as intermediaries. In the legal services stage of prime minister David Cameron’s ‘red tape challenge’ the Ministry of Justice has pinpointed more than 150 regulations suitable for scrutiny. Lawyers will ...
-
News
Torch bearer
Kate Hincks, vice-chair of the Lawyers with Disabilities Division of the Law Society, was chosen from 30,000 People’s Champions to carry the Olympic torch through Royal Wootton Bassett on its journey around Britain. Hincks has been volunteering since she was 11 years old and currently ...
-
News
Banking on caution
Christopher Digby-Bell’s letter urging lawyers to rein in their banking clients rang a bell with me. In the early 1970s, when I was working as a newly qualified solicitor for a magic circle firm, I raised a query with a secondary banking client concerning the wisdom of some of their ...
-
News
Arbitrary decisions
Picture this: an international arbitration, millions of dollars at stake; an expert is called to give evidence on damages right at the end of the hearing. This is what he says happened: ‘Everyone had flown miles to come to the arbitration. I was the last witness. One of the counsel ...
-
News
Case management - a more robust approach
Guntrip v Cheney Coaches Ltd, [2012] EWCA Civ 392, Ward, Elias and Lewison LJJ; Fred Perry Holdings Ltd v Brands Plaza Trading Ltd & Another [2012] EWCA Civ 224, Jackson and Lewison LJJ.
-
News
Reserved service plea by Society over immigration advice
Immigration advice should become a reserved legal activity to prevent non-authorised persons causing ‘consumer detriment’, the Law Society argues today. In a response to a Legal Services Board discussion paper, the Society offers to help assure quality standards by ‘providing further adjuncts’ to its Immigration ...
-
News
Learning from Germany in forging a more effective criminal justice system for young adults
by Andrew Neilson, director of campaigns at the Howard League The T2A Alliance has put together a 10-step plan to reduce the number of young adults in the criminal justice system.
-
News
Patent court decision 'worth £3bn a year to UK'
The UK legal sector could lose almost £3bn a year if the proposed new European central patents court is not based in London, the Law Society claimed this week.
-
News
Social mobility in the legal profession
Holes will be picked by some lawyers in Alan Milburn’s ‘progress report’ on social mobility and the professions, published today - even though he was nicer about lawyers than other professionals. As was argued with his previous findings, critics will point out that law firms cannot use their selection policy ...
-
News
First in, last out
I was sat at my desk well before 8am on a day when I had had the possibility of a holiday but it had not happened for one reason or another. This happens if you are a partner: you earmark time off but something urgent always comes up. A colleague ...
-
News
Top firms told to stop cherry-picking from Oxbridge
Law firms are still recruiting from a narrow elite pool of graduates, the government’s independent reviewer on social mobility and child poverty reports today. The Labour former minister Alan Milburn (pictured) said today that access to professions remains dominated by people from wealthy socio-economic backgrounds, ...
-
News
Quiz your broker on fees, Society urges firms
The Law Society will today publish insurance guidance urging solicitors to exercise their rights and find out exactly what their broker is being paid. The 2012 PII Buyers’ Guide will help solicitors find out from their brokers all the fees and commissions they receive - as ...
-
News
Only two solicitors apply for silk round
The number of applications for silk has dropped for the third year running with only two solicitors among the 183 applicants, figures released by the independent selection panel revealed today. In 2011, there were 214 applications, compared with 251 in 2010 which was down from 275 ...
-
News
MoJ answers key QOCS questions
The government has answered some of the fundamental questions about how its new system for transferring the costs burden in personal injury cases will work. Under qualified one-way costs shifting, claimants are intended to be protected from defendants’ costs in most circumstances, even when they lose. ...
-
News
Former City partner gets three years for £1.3m fraud
A former Hogan Lovells partner has been jailed for three years after defrauding his firm of £1.3m. Christopher Grierson (pictured) was sentenced today at Southwark Crown Court after pleading guilty in March to four charges of false accounting. Grierson, who was dismissed by his firm in ...
-
News
Law Society wary of 'secret justice' plan
Civil liberties groups today dismissed as 'spin' government claims that pre-publication changes to the Justice and Security Bill would protect the public without damaging ‘historic freedoms’ of open justice and accountability. In a concession to critics of a green paper last year, the bill scales back ...
-
News
Law-making at decade low
The number of legislative changes last year fell to its lowest in almost a decade, according to figures published yesterday by Sweet & Maxwell. Data highlighted that 99% of the new laws were passed as statutory instruments, without being subjected to full parliamentary scrutiny. ...
-
News
New Society sections open to non-solicitors
The Law Society has announced that it has set up two new sections with membership open to non-solicitors. The Equality and Diversity (E&D) Section and the Family Section will both launch on 25 June. The E&D Section is open to solicitors practising ...
-
News
Living in a time of perilous uncertainty
This is a piece about mood and atmosphere: how it feels to live and work in Brussels at a time of feverish speculation about the European Union’s future. It says something of the stability of the last few decades that it is the first occasion in my life that I ...
-
News
Is it wrong to profit from divorce litigation?
There are some intriguing developments in the financing of divorce cases at the moment. Investment in divorce litigation hit the headlines earlier in the year with the high-profile divorce of Michelle Young from her millionaire former husband Scot, described in the press as a 'fixer’ for ...