All News articles – Page 1547
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News
NatWest to withdraw LPC study loan product
A decision by NatWest to cease offering preferential loans to students studying the Legal Practice Course has prompted concerns over access to the profession. NatWest, owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, is currently the only bank to offer loans under a Professional Trainee Loan scheme for ...
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SRA launches online registration for students
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has today launched an online service that will make it quicker and easier for students to enrol with it when they begin their legal professional training. The system will also enable students to pay their enrolment fee securely online by ...
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Law firms must step into the breach if LPC loans dry up
NatWest has recently decided that it will withdraw its Professional Trainee Loan scheme for students studying the Legal Practice Course and the bar’s equivalent course. It declined to say exactly why it had taken the decision to no longer offer the product to new customers, ...
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Law Society opens its Diversity Access Scheme
The Law Society has opened applications for its Diversity Access Scheme (DAS), aimed at law students facing social, educational, financial or personal obstacles to qualification. The scheme involves the chance to gain a Legal Practice Course scholarship, work experience and mentoring. Previous ...
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Maximum ABS penalties raised to £250m
Alternative business structures (ABS) that step out of line could face a maximum fine £100m higher than previously expected, after the Legal Services Board decided to increase the maximum penalty for errant ABS to £250m. Responding to a consultation on the issue, the LSB said it ...
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Where IT systems are failing
It’s the Legal IT exhibition this week so I write this with some trepidation as I’m about to make a general criticism of a significant area of solicitors business practise. I’ll get my mitigation in first. What I’m about to outline is our experience of ...
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Olympic pro bono service launches
Solicitors and barristers are being asked to provide free legal advice to participants in The London 2012 Olympic Games, as a new pro bono service was unveiled today. The Law Society, the ...
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TV Edwards to merge with Blacklaws Davis
High profile London legal aid firms TV Edwards and Blacklaws Davis are to merge on 1 May 2011, they said today. On 1 April 2011 London criminal law and care work firm Dundons will also merge with ...
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Two solicitors awarded Queen's Counsel status
Just two solicitors were among the 120 Queen’s Counsel appointments announced by the Lord Chancellor today, while three high-profile solicitors were awarded honorary silk. The successful solicitor applicants were David Price, founder of London media law firm David Price Solicitors & Advocates, and Timothy Taylor, litigation ...
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Do lawyers need digital certificates?
The European Commission has been going crazy over the last few weeks issuing consultations on matters relevant to the legal profession, and we are struggling to keep up: ADR, collective redress, Recognition of Professional Qualifications Di
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Chancery Lane to launch will writing campaign
The Law Society is launching a campaign to ensure that will writers take formal qualifications before attempting to provide a service to consumers. The campaign, which will warn about the financial and other risks of using unqualified will writers, will include lobbying the Lord Chancellor ...
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Judges slam legal aid cuts and lawyers who bring ‘unmeritorious’ claims
Judges have slammed government plans to cut legal aid, but also criticised publicly funded lawyers who bring ‘unmeritorious’ public law claims, and proposed limiting legal aid in judicial review cases. In a response to the government’s consultation on legal aid published last week, the Judges’ Council ...
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Law Society warns against ‘scaremongering’ insurance adverts
The Law Society has warned homeowners not to be taken in by ‘scaremongering’ adverts offering ‘ineffective’ insurance protection against property fraud. The warning follows the publication of title theft protection insurance adverts that Chancery Lane says have been ‘aggressively marketed’ by some insurance companies. ...
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Hogan Lovells reports profits boost
City firm Hogan Lovells has reported a 10% boost to partner profits in its first set of full-year financial results. The firm, formed by the merger of US firm Hogan & Hartson and City firm Lovells last year, reported average profits per equity partner (PEP) of ...
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Legal recruitment picks up for in-house and banking
The ‘war for talent’ is hotting up in the in-house sector, with companies increasingly entering into a bidding war for candidates, according to recruitment firm Badenoch & Clark. The recruiter’s executive director Lynne Hardman said that recruitment is also picking up in the banking sector and ...
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The Legal Services Board’s glowing view of ABSs is not realistic
Reading through the Legal Services Board’s draft business plan for 2011/12, I was stuck by the glowing vision it presented of the post-alternative business structure world. It seemed to me to be the type of gushing enthusiasm that you would expect from the government department ...
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Very superstitious
You might expect lawyers to be a logical breed, immune to superstition. But not so the US trial lawyer, according to last week’s New York Times. The paper revealed the little rituals followed by some of the country’s top lawyers during trials: ordering the same ...
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Sole practitioners
Any solicitors who are angling for a new hobby this year may be interested to learn that the Lawyers’ Fishing Club will be holding its annual beginners’ and new members’ day on Saturday 2 April at Rib Valley Lakes, near Ware in Hertfordshire. Intriguingly, as ...
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Moot point
Obiter extends its congratulations to the team of students from St Peter’s School in Bournemouth, who came 11th out of 30 in the recent Empire Mock Trial Competition in New York. The trip was sponsored by the Bournemouth & District Law Society.
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Trick of the mind
‘Prepare to enter a world where mind reading and mind control are commonplace, and the rules of reality are flexible’. So boasts the promotional literature of ‘psychological mindreader’ Michael Hinchliffe, who also happens to be a criminal defence solicitor at Fraser Dawbarns in King’s Lynn. ...