All News articles – Page 1412
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News
Freshfields and Linklaters dampen magic circle celebrations
Magic circle rivals Linklaters and Freshfields have recorded modest financial results to end a week of announcements by the UK’s biggest firms.
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Top-100 annual results show PEP up by 8%
The first batch of top-ranking law firms to publish annual financial results for 2011/12 have reported average growth in profit per equity partner (PEP) of 8% (see table below). However, this figure masks wide variations in trading performance which have also been complicated by merger activity.
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PC fee up 5%, Law Society council agrees
The Law Society council today approved a practising certificate fee increase of £16 for 2012/13. The fee for each solicitor will rise from £328 to £344. Individual Compensation Fund contributions rise from £60 to £92. The contribution for firms will increase from £722 to £1,340. ...
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Barclays ‘faces $6bn in Libor scandal claims’
Barclays Bank Plc could face claims totalling $6bn globally following revelations that staff members were involved in the manipulation of the London inter-bank offered rate (Libor), the Gazette has learned.
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Wills and probate company goes ABS
Birmingham wills and probate company Northwood Banks & Co has become the second company licensed as an alternative business structure (ABS) by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC). The firm, which since 1987 has provided will writing and probate services, has now been licensed to ...
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Society plans accreditation scheme for will-writing
The Law Society is to launch a will-writing and probate accreditation scheme along the lines of its Conveyancing Quality Scheme, it emerged last week in a speech by the chief executive. The speech also contained calls for solicitors to exploit the potential of will banks ...
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SRA outlines ‘race bias’ action plan
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has reasserted its commitment to transparency in regulatory decision-making following allegations of discrimination against black and minority ethnic (BME) lawyers. Following talks with its External Implementation Group (EIG), which represents minority and BME practitioners, the regulator has drawn up a list ...
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Society advice on SRA diversity data
The Law Society has published a practice note to help firms and sole practitioners comply with regulatory new requirements to collect data on the diversity of their workforce. Data to be reported include job status and role as well as age, gender, disability, ethnicity, religion ...
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Trust in Baldrick
In its struggle for survival in the face of successive and impending legal aid cuts, Hackney Community Law Centre has some stalwart allies. It hosted a reception in the House of Lords last week to thank its supporters. Two of its patrons, Lord Low of Dalston and the MP for ...
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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 ...
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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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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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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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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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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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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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News
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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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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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’.