All News articles – Page 1447
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News
Lit funder’s profits up
A leading US litigation funder has announced £10m profits ahead of its expansion into the UK market. In its financial results released this week, Burford Capital revealed it committed around £113m to 19 new investments during 2011. Since being launched in September 2009, the group has ...
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How to judge restorative justice
The Criminal Justice Alliance (CJA) has called on the government to legislate to increase the use of restorative justice - the process that gives victims the chance to tell offenders the impact of their crime.
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Immigration
Asylum - Refugee - Temporary admission R (on the application of ST (Eritrea)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department: Supreme Court (Lords Hope DP, Brown, Mance, Kerr, Clarke and Dyson, Lady Hale) : 21 March 2012 ...
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Intellectual property
Transfer of action - Action assigned to Patents County Court - Defendant applying for transfer of trade mark proceedings to High Court Comic Enterprises Ltd v Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation: PCC (Judge Birss QC): 22 March 2012 ...
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Taking liberties
Nothing in the world is more important than petrol and pasties, of course. But our short-attention-span media might have made even more of this week’s jaw-dropping proposals from home secretary Theresa May to introduce draconian new web snooping powers (Big Brother WILL BE watching you! trumpeted the Independent).
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NHS reforms ‘will mean more litigation’
The government’s reforms to the NHS in England are set to cause a wave of legal difficulties for local authorities, solicitors were warned this week. Ben Troke, partner at Midlands firm Browne Jacobson, told the Solicitors in Local Government annual weekend school that the Health and ...
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Stamping out misconduct
The role of tax planning in legal advice is under increased scrutiny. Tax planners are now in danger of being viewed as ‘tax avoiders’ (HM Revenue & Customs) or even ‘tax evaders’ (Solicitors Regulation Authority) - and the implications could be career shortening for solicitors. Here is why. ...
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Songs of praise
The legal sector is the latest to catch the choral bug (cue jokes about solicitors singing for their supper). Global firm Norton Rose last month sang its way to the Office Choir of the Year 2012 award after a virtuoso performance in London. Singing pieces from ...
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Title role
If Mr Pearlman would like to be addressed as ‘Doctor’, at what stage of his career does he want to be addressed as ‘Mr’? Or is he suggesting that medical consultants are not as well-respected as their junior colleagues? ...
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Theme tune
Our waxing lyrical competition - to come up with songs appropriate to Gazette news stories - has set the newsdesk at Obiter towers humming. One colleague suggests that Michael Jackson’s Leave Me Alone might go well with the Legal Ombudsman’s complaints procedure, and the Communards’ Don’t Leave Me This Way ...
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The FOI Act cannot be compared to legal privilege
Is it possible to deliver frank, robust, clear advice if you know it might become public? This is one of the key points members of the House of Commons Justice Select Committee must consider in their post-legislative scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act.
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Secret trials: ‘explore alternatives'
Government proposals to extend the use of secret hearings in cases where evidence might compromise national security are a radical departure from the UK’s ‘traditions of open justice and fairness’, MPs and peers said today. In a critical report on the Justice and Security Green Paper, ...
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Workhouse legislation goes on bonfire of statutory dead wood
More than 800 pieces of ‘statutory dead wood’ from the 1600s and earlier would be scrapped under measures proposed today by the two bodies charged with tidying and modernising UK legislation. Laws identified for repeal include a 1696 act to fund the rebuilding of St Paul’s ...
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Intended retirement ruling opens door to employment tribunal claims
The Court of Appeal handed down judgment this week in the case of R&R Plant Hire (Peterborough) Ltd v Bailey, ruling in favour of the employee. The decision is not only a win for Mr Bailey; it is also a boon for an inestimable number of employees who will suddenly ...
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Green forms and fixed fees
I am impressed by the number of people who fondly (I think fondly is the correct word) remember Green forms. I wonder how many of you recall five-pound fixed fees. It had a certain ring to it. If your client was not eligible to sign the Green form then you'd ...
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SRA to shut 15 ARP firms
A total of 15 firms will be closed down after failing to find an escape route from the assigned risks pool. The firms will be shut after failing to secure professional indemnity insurance on the open market by the 1 April deadline, the Solicitors Regulation Authority ...
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DBAs move a step closer
With damages-based agreements (or contingency fees as they used to be known) coming into being next April, the Civil Justice Council has now set the wheels in motion to begin drawing up the all-important rules that will govern how the new fees are actually going to operate.