All News articles – Page 1403
-
News
Grieve: interpreter failure ‘not contempt’
The attorney general has declined a request to launch an action for contempt against a contractor accused of failing to supply court interpreters - but said that wasted costs orders could apply to such cases.
-
News
Hundreds of CMCs ‘cancelled’ by MoJ
The Ministry of Justice has closed down about one in five claims management companies in the past year, according to figures obtained by the Gazette. A freedom of information request to the MoJ’s Claims Management Regulation department has revealed that 734 businesses were ‘cancelled’ in ...
-
News
Law firm is business loan pioneer
An East Anglian high street firm is one of the first businesses in the country to secure a loan through a new government-backed financing scheme. Tees Solicitors, which has six offices across four counties, has obtained £2m from Barclays under the National Loan Guarantee Scheme announced ...
-
News
Lawyer foot soldiers of the Big Society need a state-maintained road to march on
This week chancellor George Osborne received a bloody nose from charities which estimate their finances will be hard hit by his decision to place a cap on tax relief for charitable donations. His move may or may not be right in principle. But as with ...
-
News
Serve deaf clients better 'or face claims'
Law firms could face unlimited discrimination claims from deaf and hard of hearing people if they continue failing to make ‘reasonable adjustments’, consumer watchdogs have warned.
-
News
Sleeping beauties
Reading the report of the magistrate who was alleged to have gone to sleep during a mitigation reminds me of the late Wilfrid Fordham. He used to say: ‘A speech in mitigation gets no better the longer it goes on’. In his later years, Wilfrid was a great one for ...
-
News
Asbestos victims hit by legislation delay
The government has admitted that a 2010 act designed to help people gain compensation for industrial diseases is unlikely to be implemented until 2013. The Third Parties (Rights Against Insurers) Act was pushed through two years ago to update legislation dating from 1930. It gave claimants, ...
-
News
Tracking scheme aims to cut family delays
A new initiative to tackle delays in the family courts has got under way. The pilot scheme to track all public law cases issued from 2 April 2012 follows the launch of a case management system monitoring the progress of cases, recording all case management decisions, adjournments, the use of ...
-
News
Retain legal aid bill amendments, MPs urged
Opponents of the government’s legal aid reforms have united to lobby MPs to retain amendments made by peers when the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill returns to the Commons next week. The Law Society and Bar Council, together with bodies representing charities ...
-
News
Advise courts of uncooperative clients, solicitors told
Criminal solicitors should tell the court when clients fail to co-operate with them, to avoid the risk of breaching their duty to the court, the Law Society has advised. Chancery Lane has issued an updated practice note setting out the duties and burdens affecting solicitors arising ...
-
News
The right address
I was interested by Ian Kinloch’s letter in which he refers to a German solicitor being addressed as Herr Doktor. I hold the Institute of Linguists diploma in French and liaised with a monolingual French notaire on behalf of a client buying a holiday home in the Dordogne. Leaving aside ...
-
News
Law Society slams minimum salary consultation
Scrapping the minimum salary could force some trainee solicitors to claim housing benefits and take on second jobs, creating an image that will neither benefit the profession nor promote social mobility within it, the Law Society has warned. In its response to a Solicitors Regulation ...
-
News
The human cost of legal aid cuts
Next Tuesday the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill will be back in the Commons for MPs to consider amendments made by peers. It is likely that many of the amendments will be reversed and the bill, which removes huge areas of law from the scope of legal ...
-
News
Border agency 'cynicism' behind appeal losses
‘Bad and cynical’ decision making lies behind the UK Border Agency’s (UKBA) continued record of losing half of all appeals against orders to remove immigrants and failed asylum seekers, it was alleged today. Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants legal policy director Hina Majid ...
-
News
Drinking and casual sexism still institutional in top firms, LSB research claims
The legal profession’s culture of ‘casual sexism’ and high levels of drinking has led women and ethnic minority solicitors to adopt special strategies to overcome institutional discrimination in law firms, researchers funded by the Legal Services Board told a conference today. Some Asian women solicitors choose ...
-
News
Caplen next in line for deputy vice president
The Law Society council has elected Andrew Caplen as the next deputy vice president of the Society. Caplen, a criminal and commercial property consultant at Southampton firm Abels, will take up the role in July and become president in 2014. He has been a council member ...
-
News
OFR: the first stumbling block?
So where are we after six months of operating under outcomes-focused regulation (OFR)? Well the world hasn’t ended, the profession hasn’t imploded and we haven’t seen any public floggings. We have of course seen some high-profile criminal charges against individuals caught appropriating funds from their firms which hasn’t done the ...
-
News
Hamza deportation no breach of article three, rights court rules
Abu Hamza and four other alleged terrorists are set to be extradited to the US following today’s European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruling that detention conditions and length of sentences in the US would not amount to ill-treatment. Proceedings against a sixth alleged terrorist, who ...