All News articles – Page 1461
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News
Needless long hours
I read the comments of both Nick Herbert and in relation to magistrates sitting at unsocial times and hours. I have little respect for Mr Herbert’s opinion that ‘swift justice is currently the exception...’. Is he unaware of the Criminal Justice: Simple, Speedy Summary (CJSSS) process? ...
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Local government
Council tax - Rating - Rating list Wilson v Jo Coll (listing officer): Queen's Bench Division, Administrative Court (London) (Mr Justice Singh (judgment delivered extempore)): 13 October 2011 The Administrative ...
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LCJ ‘not giving up’ on solicitor judges
Law firms should be more supportive of solicitors applying for judicial positions and stop allowing the issue to blight promising careers, the UK’s two senior judges told a House of Lords committee last week. Supreme Court president Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers and Lord Chief Justice ...
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Lawyers working at quangos can get support
With the government’s controversial Public Bodies Bill promising a ‘bonfire of the quangos’, lawyers working in the sector are facing an unsettled future, with increasing demands to do more within shrinking budgets. The bill, currently making its way through parliament, will allow ministers, by order, to abolish, merge or transfer ...
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Keep formal training
I have followed the recent correspondence and editorial on the subject of training with some interest. I am about to retire after over 40 years as a solicitor and nearly 50 years at work. Mr Howell’s experience must have been later than mine.
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Plea for Society to join forensic service fight
A solicitor renowned for his work freeing the wrongly convicted Guildford Four has asked the Law Society to become a ‘major player’ in the campaign to stop the government’s proposed closure of the Forensic Science Service (FSS).
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Workers’ rights go in and out of fashion
Many comparisons can be made between employment law and the fashion industry - even leaving aside the glamour of its practitioners. Both can be cruel mistresses, blown in the winds of opinion; each is subject to changes that can appear at best fickle (and are often imported from the continent). ...
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Employment
Statutory sick pay - Employer's liability Seaton v Revenue and Customs Commissioners: Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) (Sir Stephen Oliver QC and Edward Sadler): 22 July 2011 The Upper ...
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Costs rule ‘will fuel litigation’
Litigators may face a tough new rule on the ‘proportionality’ of their costs that could fuel satellite litigation and uncertainty, experts warned last week. Nicholas Bacon QC, a member of both the Civil Procedure Rules committee and Civil Justice Council group dealing with implementation of the ...
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Paperless working concerns
As many defence practitioners will be aware, the Crown Prosecution Service is rapidly moving forward with its plans to achieve a paperless office through its Transforming Through Technology (T3) project. The impetus to achieve this ‘holy grail’ of the paperless office - first spoken of in the commercial world in ...
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Employment law should be centralised
by Joanne Owers, chair of the Employment Lawyers Association Another month, another government consultation - or so it seems. No sooner does one consultation period around an important area of employment law end, than another often overlapping one commences - and before government has indicated its ...
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More than just ‘bumper stickers’
To refer to documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a series of ‘bumper stickers devoid of substance’ - as one speaker did at the ‘Fairness, Justice and Human Rights’ conference last Saturday - is to overlook an important point. While it is ...
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A case where a solicitor is both funded and not funded leaves little incentive to risk representation
Now that there is no payment under legal aid for magistrates’ court work which is committed to the Crown court, I find myself in a practical equivalent of the paradox described by Schrödinger and his dead or alive moggy.
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Court closures 'undermine Big Society'
A leading barrister has called for a halt to magistrates’ court closures, saying economies would be better made by returning the courts to magistrates’ control. In a pamphlet, The Cost to Justice, published by think tank Politeia, Stanley Brodie QC said the programme to cut 142 ...
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Justice head bemoans judicial diversity gap
The head of law reform and human rights organisation Justice has heavily criticised the lack of diversity in the top echelon of the judiciary. ‘We are shamed’ by the lack of women and ethnic minority judges in the Supreme Court, compared with the US and Canada, ...
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MPs call for comprehensive referral fee ban
An influential Commons committee has today called on the Ministry of Justice to impose a comprehensive ban on referral fees and tougher penalties for breaching data protection laws. A report published by the House of Commons justice committee concludes that referral fees often reward illegal behaviour, ...
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Djanogly: referral ban will cover recipients
The new offence being created to ban referral fees will cover those receiving the fees as well as the lawyers who pay them, justice minister Jonathan Djanogly said last week. The minister told a LexisNexis costs conference that he wants the offence to go ‘further ...
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Balanced budget?
It is reported that the government plans to increase its foreign aid budget by a staggering 35% to countries like Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Burma, where international aid officials concede that fraud and corruption have been endemic for years. It is plainly the case that ...
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The Baker report on extradition law is something to build on
When Sir Michael Bichard was finalising his report on child protection measures after the Soham murders of 2002, he took some trouble to ensure the institutions he was about to criticise would give his recommendations a fair wind. On the BBC’s Law in Action this week, he told me how ...
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Record fall in applications for university law degrees
The biggest fall in university applications in more than 30 years has seen the number of candidates applying to study law drop by a record 5.2%, according to figures released by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. Last year 13,858 people applied to study law ...