All News articles – Page 1472
-
News
The ‘golden rule’
Wharton v Bancroft and Others [2011] EWHC 3250 Ch: this case is a typical example of the strong feelings that can arise where a parent leaves the estate to a subsequent spouse, disinheriting the adult children.
-
News
Lifting the lid on ‘hackgate’
by Gill Phillips, director of editorial legal services at Guardian News & Media Ltd As we all now know, News International last month settled 37 of the civil claims brought against News Group Newspapers (NGN), the publisher of the now defunct News of the World
-
News
Human rights
Public order - Freedom of association and assembly - Defendant protestors setting up camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral City of London Corporation v Samede and others: QB (Mr Justice Lindblom): 18 January 2012 ...
-
News
Judge for yourself
The Law Society put together a stellar panel for the launch of its advocacy section, or the fifth inn, as president John Wotton called it. The lineup included the lord chief justice, Lord Judge (pictured), master of the rolls Lord Neuberger and president of the Queen’s bench division Sir John ...
-
News
Window of opportunity
Alas, Obiter’s Brighter Window campaign for high street firms is getting off to a slow start. Despite the excellent example set by Gross & Co of Bury St Edmunds it seems most managing partners are still content to display a pane of frosted glass and, if they’re really daring, a ...
-
News
Police powers
Power to stop, search and detain - Two demonstration camps in London R (on the application of Moos and another) v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis: Court of Appeal, Civil Division (Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury MR, Lord Justices ...
-
News
Sharp practice
In Law Society v LSC et al [2010] EWHC 2550 (Admin) the court acknowledged that solicitors working in the Family Court were ‘a band of skilled and dedicated lawyers working for little reward’. Your edition of 12 January records the entry into administration of Jewels, ...
-
News
Short shrift
So the Civil Justice Council suggests that one way of dealing with the problems caused to the administration of civil justice by untutored litigants in person is for practitioners to sell them small amounts of legal advice, and gives as an example a firm that charges £7 for 5 minutes. ...
-
News
Jackson civil cost reforms deferred until April 2013
The government has deferred Lord Justice Jackson's civil costs reforms until April 2013 but fought off attempts to scale back the changes. The Ministry of Justice this week confirmed that civil litigation reform will be put back by six months to give law firms time to ...
-
News
RJW to be limited company following £53.8m Aussie takeover
Top-100 firm Russell Jones & Walker this week became the biggest beast in the new world of alternative business structures by announcing a £53.8m takeover by a stock-exchange listed Australian firm. Slater & Gordon of Melbourne announced the acquisition on Monday, saying it planned to create one the UK’s biggest ...
-
News
Judges ponder action over pensions
Judges are considering legal action to block an increase in their pension contributions. The judges claim that the changes, which follow the 2010 Hutton report on public service pensions and come into force in April, would be unlawful and have set up an action group to ...
-
News
JLD gets the message out, forsooth
What’s in a name? / That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet (Romeo and Juliet). I’m getting all Shakespearian about names here because the moniker - the Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) - defies easy definition. For starters, lots ...
-
News
US warning on third-party funding reform
An influential US legal lobbying group has warned of 'serious concerns' about the growing power of third-party litigation funding in the UK. The Chamber Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) has already pleaded with the American Bar Association to halt the increasing use of external litigation funding ...
-
News
Lords expose intellectual bankruptcy of LASPO Part 2
The House of Lords debate which took place on 30 January revealed divided opinion on key issues in the proposed legislation in Part 2 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. We now know the changes will be delayed. And emphasis was placed ...
-
News
Government at odds with itself on domestic violence
The debate over the definition of domestic violence used in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill highlights the absence of joined-up thinking within the government. Even as the bill appears to seek to adopt a narrower definition of domestic violence than that commonly ...
-
News
The smoke and mirrors of whiplash rhetoric
by David Bott, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) For some time, there has been a theme of depicting whiplash claimants as fraudsters. Jack Straw describes whiplash as a ‘profitable invention of the human imagination’.
-
News
The business of immigration 2012
Contrary to expectations this is going to be a good year for immigration practitioners. When considering immigration lawyers’ prospects for 2012 we need to remember a lesson from Frederick Bastiat’s Parable of the Broken Window. Bastiat was a 19th century French economist, who taught us to ...
-
News
Fewer apply to study law
Applications to study law at UK universities and colleges have fallen sharply, figures released today show - but not as sharply as applications for university places overall.
-
News
Data protection - and gossip
As the Gazette briefly reported, the European Commission published its new data protection legislation last week, providing a fresh regulatory structure with which all lawyers and law firms will have to become familiar. I shall focus on that below.