All News articles – Page 1565
-
News
Corporate governance proposals ‘will dilute UK rules’, warns GC100 chair
A torrent of EU initiatives aimed at tightening up corporate governance risks ‘diluting’ robust UK rules and will be a major concern for senior in-house lawyers in 2011, the head of an influential group of general counsel has told the Gazette. John Davidson (pictured), chair of ...
-
News
Employment
Remuneration - Holidays with pay Russell and others v Transocean International Resources Ltd and others: Supreme Court (Lords Hope DP, Brown, Mance, Kerr and Wilson SCJJ): 7 December 2011 The ...
-
News
Important lessons from the new process for low-value RTA claims
Beset by problems such as delays in providing registration log-ins, several insurers not being registered on the system and countless technical hitches involving the online portal, many have described the new streamlined low value road traffic claims process as a shambles. With the Ministry of Justice introducing the new electronic ...
-
News
Chancery Lane warns against publication of complaints
Reporting the names of lawyers and law firms who have been the subject of complaints by the public will disproportionately affect sole practitioners and black and minority ethnic (BME) lawyers, according to the Law Society. Responding to the Legal Ombudsman’s (LeO) consultation on whether its decisions ...
-
News
Students lured by City-style work
Prospective lawyers are most interested in pursuing careers in City-style law, figures from legal careers website All About Law seen exclusively by the Gazette have suggested. An analysis of the advice pages viewed by the 10,000 students registered on the site indicates a preference for corporate ...
-
News
My predictions for 2011
This time last year I wrote a blog for the Gazette that predicted a major change in 2010. I suggested that solicitors firms and new legal service providers would be divided into two broad groups – those that used web-based systems to deliver services to clients and those that didn’t. ...
-
News
Are judges getting feisty?
You might expect a court’s annual report to be a pretty dull read. But not so the Court of Appeal’s annual report, released earlier this month, with a forward by the lord chief justice Lord Judge.
-
News
Expert fees for independent social workers ‘irrational’
The Ministry of Justice is putting the welfare of children caught up in complex family court proceedings at risk, organisations representing independent social work (ISW) expert witnesses have claimed. The British Association of Social Workers and others have written to justice secretary Kenneth Clarke to ...
-
News
Bar Council calls for prohibition of referral fees
The Bar Council and the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) have today called for referral fees to be prohibited. In a joint statement sent to the Legal Services Board, which is in the process of deciding whether or not to ban referral fees, the two bodies say ...
-
News
Ministry of Justice backs virtual courts scheme
Video technology will still play an important part in the courts system despite a report criticising the costs of the virtual courts pilot, the government has said. Justice minister Jonathan Djanogly said in a statement that the report on a year-long pilot showed that virtual courts ...
-
News
You must speak proper to work in the City
Clever, white, working-class men and women are being overlooked for top jobs in City law firms because they don’t quite ‘fit in’, according to research released yesterday. ‘Focusing on ethnicity enables law firms to boast excellent or, at the very least, improved diversity outcomes, despite the ...
-
News
Forced mediation will encourage ‘excessive demands’ in family disputes
Pushing parties into mediation in family disputes will encourage badly behaved partners to make ‘excessive demands’, an MP warned in a parliamentary debate on legal aid reform last week. Labour MP Karen Buck, who tabled an adjournment debate on legal aid that took place last week, ...
-
News
Age of criminal responsibility will not change, says government
The government will ‘hold firm’ on the age of criminal responsibility despite the findings of a recent critical parliamentary report on the matter, the House of Lords heard yesterday. Francis Hare, the Earl of Listowel, questioned justice minister Lord McNally over the All-Party Parliamentary Group for ...
-
News
Publish complaints against firms, Consumer Panel urges
The body that advises the Legal Services Board on the interests of consumers has called for the publication of complaints made against law firms if they have been upheld. Responding to an open consultation by the Legal Ombudsman (LeO) on whether its decisions should be published, the Legal Services Consumer ...
-
News
‘Irresponsible’ to roll out virtual courts after critical report, says Law Society
Virtual courts should not be rolled out nationally following a critical Ministry of Justice evaluation of a year-long pilot, the Law Society has said. The MoJ said yesterday that the pilot was successful in reducing the average time from charge to first hearing, failure to appear ...
-
News
Firms reject candidates on the basis of their accents, research suggests
Top London law firms are hiring graduates with ‘smart’ accents and public school backgrounds because they think they are better for their image than working-class candidates, new research has suggested. Suitable white working-class applicants are being passed over for jobs in favour of middle-class graduates of ...
-
News
Immigration cap ‘unlawful’, court rules
The home secretary’s imposition of a temporary cap on the number of skilled workers allowed into the UK from outside the European Union was ‘unlawful’ and must be annulled, the High Court has ruled.
-
News
Lord chief justice allows Twitter in court
The lord chief justice has issued guidance indicating that journalists and others may tweet from the courtroom, provided this does not interfere with the administration of justice. The decision, contained in interim guidance issued today, comes after journalists were allowed to use Twitter to ...
-
News
Less bureaucracy for all
Christmas is coming, and so the European Commission wants to clear the decks before the holiday break. We notice this before the summer break, too. It announced last week not one, but two, initiatives affecting the work of lawyers.
-
News
How old is too old? Retirement ages for partners
Telling someone that they must stop work merely because they have reached a particular birthday is a blatant form of age discrimination. Laws prohibiting age discrimination came into force in 2006 and were this year incorporated, largely unchanged, in the new Equality Act. Age differs from ...