All News articles – Page 1556
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News
Conveyancers pressured into tax avoidance
Conveyancing solicitors are being pressured to become involved in stamp duty land tax (SDLT) avoidance schemes that cost the public purse around £35m, the Gazette has learned. To protect solicitors and help them challenge requests from clients or third parties to become involved in such schemes, ...
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Debt advice service to close
The Financial Inclusion Fund’s (FIF) free national debt advice service is set to close after the government axed its £25m-a-year funding. Last month, the financial secretary to the Treasury, Mark Hoban, confirmed that funding for the free face-to-face advice service, which has operated since 2005, will ...
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ABS: retrograde step?
May I add to the ruminations of Peter Jones concerning alternative business structures? Some 47 years in private practice has engendered within me but one confidently held opinion, which is that the law is vastly more complex than it ever was, and becomes more so by ...
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ABS: retrograde step?
May I add to the ruminations of Peter Jones concerning alternative business structures? Some 47 years in private practice has engendered within me but one confidently held opinion, which is that the law is vastly more complex than it ever was, and becomes more so by ...
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Are solicitors right to worry about publication of complaints?
Plans by the new Legal Services Ombudsman to publish details of complaints against law firms seem to be ruffling a few feathers in the profession. But while the Law Society has warned against the proposals on the basis that statistics show they would disadvantage certain sections of the profession, consumer ...
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SRA makes training appointments in advance of review
Slaughter and May human resources and training chief Louise Meikle has been appointed as one of five external members of the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s education and training committee, which is to conduct a fundamental review of training. Meikle is responsible for the recruitment, development and retention ...
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Regulator presses for steeper fines against ABSs
Alternative business structures (ABSs) must face fines far in excess of the £150m maximum proposed by the Legal Services Board, the Solicitors Regulation Authority recommended last week. Responding to an LSB consultation on the issue, the SRA said that ‘the largest commercial entities might require a ...
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Profits continue to fall at Scottish legal firms
Scotland's solicitors’ profession is becoming increasingly polarised as the downturn continues, new figures show. Smaller firms in Glasgow and Edinburgh are continuing to suffer sharp declines in profitability, but the biggest practices, including cross-border firms, are showing strong signs of recovery. ...
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LSC and consumer bodies call for complaints publication
The Legal Services Commission is pushing to obtain access to 'detailed information' about successful complaints made against solicitors, which it will use to assess the performance of its providers. Responding to a Legal Services Ombudsman (LeO) consultation of what information it should publish on the complaints ...
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Replace ARP with three-month ‘grace period’, Law Society says
The assigned risks pool (ARP) should be scrapped and law firms should instead be given a three-month grace period by insurers in which to either find alternative professional indemnity insurance (PII) cover, merge, or close down, the Law Society is to recommend. Outlining the Society’s proposal, ...
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How eurozone bailouts affect lawyers
Greek lawyers have been on strike recently, protesting over measures brought in by their government at the insistence of the International Monetary Fund, which is helping to bail out the country’s economy. This is the first sign of a new movement: a retargeting of lawyers’ activities as part of general ...
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MoJ confirms delay of Bribery Act
The Bribery Act will not come into force in April, the Ministry of Justice confirmed today. An MoJ spokeswoman said that the ministry is working on implementing guidance ‘to make it practical and comprehensive for business’. Business leaders had criticised the legislation ...
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National Grid slashes legal panel
National Grid has cut the number of law firms it employs on its panel by a quarter, the utilities giant announced today. The company said that it has ‘sought to introduce fixed pricing and other innovative billing solutions wherever possible under the new arrangements, which also ...
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Law Society warns over control orders
The government’s new counter-terrorism measures continue to put at risk the UK’s unrivalled reputation for upholding the principles of freedom and fairness, the Law Society warned this week.
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Mock trials are an aptitude test that works
Policemen have been looking impossibly young to me for years, but now to my horror some barristers look like they have just stepped out of the school playground, too. The defence counsel I was watching had a mop of fair hair, the fringe overhanging his ...
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MoJ pledges £29m for victims of crime
The Ministry of Justice has announced that £29.4m will be dedicated to support vulnerable victims of crime over the next three years. The victim and witness voluntary sector will receive £9.8m annually from the MoJ. This will include £3.5m a year to support the work of ...
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The trials of youth
Obiter was heartened to see the talent on display at a south-east regional heat of the Bar National Mock Trial Competition last week. The trials were conducted in a competitive but civilised fashion by teams of 17-year-olds from local schools.
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Does the profession have strength in numbers?
The UK’s laughable inability to cope with more than a light dusting of frozen water is a national embarrassment. But snow has its uses. The week’s shock 0.5% GDP fall is all down to the weather, we are told, and the same applies to gruesome retail sales figures.
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Marching together
Why does Roger Smith assume that ‘most readers will never have been on a demonstration’. I, and most of my colleagues who work in publicly funded legal work, have been on countless demonstrations, relating to many different civil liberties issues over the years, and many ...
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Memory lane
Law Society’s Gazette, January 1971 Letter to the editor: At least legal jargon is clearer than computer language ...