All News articles – Page 1434
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News
Management priorities
As we look forward to 2012 and the challenges that solicitors’ firms face I would suggest they need to think carefully about their management priorities for the coming year. Direct competition for the domestic, small business and corporate client groups will become more visible as new businesses (alternative business structures ...
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News
Management priorities
As we look forward to 2012 and the challenges that solicitors’ firms face I would suggest they need to think carefully about their management priorities for the coming year. Direct competition for the domestic, small business and corporate client groups will become more visible as new businesses (alternative business structures ...
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News
Data delinquents and the money-go-round
You know the ritual. A laptop computer, smartphone or memory stick goes missing and, a few weeks or months later, some shamefaced public body admits that the device contained sensitive personal data. Over the past year, however, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has started getting ...
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Firm leaves Conveyancing Quality Scheme
A Manchester firm has withdrawn from the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) after going into the insurance assigned risks pool (ARP). GLP Crumpsall is the first firm to leave the accreditation scheme, which opened in January 2011. It withdrew voluntarily after informing the ...
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Jailing of internet contempt juror sends ‘important message’ - Grieve
A juror who carried out internet research on a defendant has been jailed for six months. The Divisional Court, headed by the lord chief justice Lord Judge, today found university lecturer Theodora Dallas (pictured) guilty of contempt of court, following a case brought by the attorney ...
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News
A Directive that you will not be able to put down
Don’t surprise me by saying that Directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional qualifications is not on your bedside-table, to be consulted when you need to be entertained in the middle of the night. It is right up there with Stephen King and JK Rowling, a masterpiece in horror and ...
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Kudos to trainee minimum wage
I’d like to say I became a journalist through a lifelong obsession with Woodward and Bernstein, a duty to inform and passion for the English language. In truth my career path probably owes more to a computer program named Kudos, which filtered your hobbies and dislikes to find your perfect ...
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News
City solicitor jailed for perverting the course of justice
A former partner of City firm Macfarlanes who claimed he was the victim of a kidnap to avoid being arrested for drink driving was today sentenced to 12 months in prison. Francis Bridgeman, 43, from Wards Lane, Wadhurst, East Sussex, was found guilty of perverting the ...
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News
Jackson urges caution over contingency fee cap
Lord Justice Jackson yesterday urged caution over setting limits on the percentage of damages that lawyers will be able to take in commercial cases under his reforms. The Court of Appeal judge also acknowledged that his wide-ranging changes to civil justice may not come into force ...
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Society contacts Cable over HSBC as Nationwide culls 'dormant' firms
The Law Society has today written an open letter to solicitors outlining its strategy and guidance for addressing HSBC’s highly controversial decision to introduce a conveyancing panel comprising just 43 firms. President John Wotton has already complained to business secretary Vince Cable, while talks took place on Wednesday this week ...
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Pinsent Masons in Anglo-Scottish merger talks
Top 20 London firm Pinsent Masons has confirmed it is in cross-border merger talks with Edinburgh-based McGrigors. If successful, the merger would create a business with a turnover of more than £300m, headquartered in London and with six offices across Asia. In ...
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News
Reprieve on special needs is first concession on legal aid bill
The government has made its first tiny concession in the House of Lords debate on proposed legal aid reforms, agreeing to table a ‘technical amendment’ to ensure all special educational needs (SEN) cases remain in scope. But justice minister Lord McNally gave little hope that ...
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Right stipes
A London stipe once said to me that, after his appointment, the first five years were learning, the second five were interesting and the remaining 10 were waiting for his pension. Certainly, some of them played with lawyers they knew to keep themselves amused. One said to me when I ...
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News
Professional service
Geyve Walker claims to inhabit ‘the hard world of commerce’. When I became a solicitor, like Franklin Sinclair, it was into a profession and not a business that I stumbled. A professional person has a number of motivations, two of which are service and compassion. ...
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News
PIN point a solution
I read with interest the letters from Edward Foster and CJA Cope regarding ‘the point’ of mediation. Cope ‘fails to understand how mediation can resolve a dispute which involves interpretation of [an] agreement’.
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Warning over minimum salary move
Junior solicitors have warned of exploitation and reduced access to the profession for the less well-off if regulators decide to ditch the minimum salary for trainees.
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News
Libel and slander
Defamatory words - Words capable of defamatory meaning Dell'Olio v Associated Newspapers Ltd: Queen's Bench Division (Mr Justice Tugendhat): 20 December 2011 The Queen's Bench Division held that the words ...
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News
Libel and slander
Defamatory words - Words capable of defamatory meaning Rothschild v Associated Newspapers Ltd: Queen's Bench Division (Mr Justice Tugendhat): 21 December 2011 The Queen's Bench Division held that in ...
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News
Does the legal profession need to have minimum trainee rates?
To paraphrase the author John O’Farrell, those in charge of society have always shown imagination in thinking of reasons why relatively poor people should work harder for less. So there is neat symmetry in the SRA’s decision to flag the likely abolition of the minimum trainee salary in the same ...