All News articles – Page 1501
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News
Privacy, rights and vulnerable people
You might have missed it, but semi-obscured by the unfolding drama over phone-hacking at News of the World, other - I think more interesting - privacy issues have been in the news and on our screens in the past few weeks. The balance of human ...
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NHS lawyers warned government that reforms would escalate its costs
NHS lawyers warned the government before it published its bill on legal aid reform that scrapping legal aid for clinical negligence claims would ‘massively’ escalate NHS legal costs, and leave some seriously injured people unable to bring cases. In its response to the government’s cost-cutting consultation ...
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Thousands of clients ‘stranded’ following IAS collapse
The collapse of not-for-profit immigration advice provider the Immigration Advisory Service (IAS) will leave thousands of clients without representation, the Law Society warned today. IAS’s legal aid contract allowed it to take on 26,700 new cases a year. It is not ...
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European Commission focuses on flaws in the auditing market
Like a glacier, the European Commission is slowly moving to deal with the auditing profession for their controversial role in the economic crisis, and generally in relation to the profession’s structural faults. As I have written before, it is about time that this issue came ...
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Immigration Advisory Service in administration
The Immigration Advisory Service, a charity that gives telephone advice to 36,000 clients and opens 7,000 appeal files every year, went into administration over the weekend. Cuts to legal aid are thought to be one reason for the charity’s financial problems. According ...
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ARP firms still owe £8.46m
Law firms in the Assigned Risks Pool still owe £8.46 million in premiums, despite debts falling during 2011. Outstanding premiums have come down from £9.3 million at the end of March this year as regulators clamp down on non-paying firms. The Solicitors ...
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‘No political will’ to reform marriage laws
There is ‘no political will’ to address the record levels of family breakdown that currently cost the country an estimated £40-100bn a year, a leading family lawyer claimed during a Law Society public debate yesterday. Ayesha Vardag, principal of London firm Vardags, one of a panel ...
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Solicitor-advocates make final effort to halt scheme
Solicitor-advocates have made a final effort to stop a scheme that will see judges evaluating their competence, which they claim would discriminate against solicitors. The Solicitors Association of Higher Court Advocates (SAHCA) has written to Solicitors Regulation Authority board members and called on them to veto ...
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LSC publishes plan for interim family contracts
The Legal Services Commission has published a plan for the tender process for new interim family contracts to start in February 2012. It proposes a non-competitive tender, meaning that all applicants meeting the minimum requirements will be awarded a contract. The ...
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Disgruntled clients: the Ombudsman gives us a glimpse
This week the Legal Ombudsman took a small baby step on a very long and distant path that may - or may not - ultimately end in the publication of complaints upheld by LeO against named law firms. That may or may not happen, and ...
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Government ‘sympathetic’ to introducing referral fee ban
The government is ‘sympathetic’ to the idea of banning referral fees, Ministry of Justice minister Lord McNally told the House of Lords yesterday. McNally said that if public opinion demands a ban, the government will respond to that demand. In ...
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SRA braced for ABS interest from abroad
The SRA has been told to prepare for increasing interest from non-English law firms following the introduction of alternative business structures.
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News
Selective memory
Politicians often accuse the press of quoting selectively. But it seems journalists are not the only ones to indulge in the practice. In a recent consultation on speeding up justice in the county courts, justice secretary Kenneth Clarke outlined the ...
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A man of Straw
As personal injury lawyers, we think it is a great shame and totally unfair that so many lawyers are criticising Jack Straw for discovering the existence of referral fees in 2011. After all, why should we expect the former justice secretary to be aware that ...
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Jurisdiction
Minor - Mirror orders - Malaysian court regulating rights of contact of child - Whether English court has jurisdiction to make orders W v W (minor) (mirror order): Court of Appeal, Civil Division: 17 June 2011 ...
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Judicial review
Availability of remedy - Upper Tribunal - Scottish Court of Session Eba v Advocate General for Scotland: Supreme Court (Lord Phillips P, Lord Hope DP, Lord Rodger, Lady Hale, Lord Brown, Lord Clarke and Lord Dyson): 22 June 2011 ...
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Lord Justice Jackson’s reforms will hurt the most vulnerable
by Nigel Muers-Raby, chairman of the Consumer Justice Alliance Lord Justice Jackson’s ill-conceived proposals for the reform of civil litigation have commenced their journey through parliament.
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Government must be persuaded to value legal profession
This is my last president’s podium. In June, I looked back over the year and selected what I felt were some of the Law Society’s key achievements. Now I want to look forward and give my personal perspective on the ...