All News articles – Page 1541
-
News
The judiciary – still too pale, male and stale?
There was a time, in those unreconstructed days before the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC), when a woman would be turned down for judicial appointment simply because her skirt was deemed too short. Or she looked bookish or spinsterish or headmistressy. Or wore ...
-
News
Landlord and tenant
Service charge - Flat - Restriction on recovery of service charge Brent London Borough Council v Shulem B Association Ltd [2011] All ER (D) 238 (Jun), (Morgan J) [2011] EWHC 1663 (Ch) ...
-
News
Libraries matter
Martin Barber-Redmore makes some valid points about the possibilities of outsourcing and electronic resources, but misses some fundamental points in his paragraph on traditional legal libraries. Libraries still have a role within law firms, regardless of where they locate themselves or how the office is arranged. ...
-
News
Practice - parties
Joinder of parties - Joinder of defendant - Claimant bringing proceedings for wrongful dismissal Shetty v Al Rushaid Petroleum Investment Company and others [2011] All ER [D] 195 [Jun], Christopher Pymont QC [2011] EWHC 1460 (ch) ...
-
News
Paying the penalty
I read the article ‘Lenders vet solicitors on Google and note that lenders are monitoring the time solicitors take to register charges. The delaying factor in almost all cases is the time lenders take to discharge existing charges after receipt of funds from the seller’s ...
-
News
Question of truth
I have not read the full survey by the Legal Services Consumer Panel (see [2011] Gazette, 23 June, 3), nor do I know what the actual question was. We do know the answer – the public believe that only 47% of lawyers are trusted to ...
-
News
No time-wasters
In common with many, I suspect, I enjoy reading the regular columns written by chief legal ombudsman Adam Sampson and his team. I am sure, like me, his readers recognise the familiar incidents described and agree that we can all improve our services. ...
-
News
ABS timetable in danger of slipping
The Solicitors Regulation Authority may not be ready to license alternative business structures from the target date of 6 October. SRA chairman Charles Plant told the regulator’s monthly board meeting today that the authority’s preparations for the change remain on schedule. ...
-
News
Mid-market firms review strategy ahead of alternative business structures
More than a third of mid-market law firms have changed their business strategies in the last year in response to the Legal Services Act. A survey of 101 firms, commissioned by legal information provider Lexis Nexis, also found that a further quarter will alter their structure ...
-
News
IAS blames legal aid cuts for its collapse
The Immigration Advisory Service (IAS) has asked clients not to attempt to visit its offices and has blamed government legal aid cuts for going into administration. IAS, the UK’s largest provider of publicly funded immigration and asylum legal advice, went into administration over the weekend. ...
-
News
Allen & Overy investigates allegations that it was tricked
Magic circle firm Allen & Overy has said it is ‘looking into’ the allegation made yesterday that it was tricked into handing over details relating to former prime minister Gordon Brown to a conman. An article in today’s Guardian newspaper claims that that lawyers at Allen ...
-
News
Professional indemnity choices
Indemnity - like Christmas - comes just once a year, which is a relief in many ways. And like Christmas we face it with good intentions to plan ahead and get everything ready on time. However well prepared we mean to be, somehow time catches ...
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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 ...
-
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 ...
-
News
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.