All News articles – Page 1588
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News
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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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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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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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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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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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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London solicitor criticises 'absurd' situation over conditional fee agreement
A London solicitor could be left tens of thousands of pounds out of pocket after a judge ruled that the funding agreement under which he accepted a case was unenforceable. Joe Golstein, at the time sole principal at Arbeid & Golstein, took on a clinical negligence ...
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Kenneth Clarke: Bribery Act guidance is clear
The justice secretary has moved to reassure ‘honest’ businesses that they will not need to spend ‘millions’ on new systems to comply with the Bribery Act, whatever they may have been told by advisers. Ken Clarke told parliament that lawyers and consultants ‘will, of course, ...
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Senior judge Lord Phillips learns the hard way after criticising government
Any judge who takes on the government in the court of public opinion is bound to end up second best. That was the lesson that the president of the Supreme Court learned the hard way last week. Sadly, Lord Phillips does not have a public ...
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Cuts to put half of legal aid firms at risk of closure
The ‘catastrophic impact’ of the government’s proposed legal aid cuts could leave 50% of firms doing publicly funded work at risk of closure, according to research commissioned by the Law Society, seen exclusively by the Gazette. Consultants Andrew Otterburn and Vicky Ling surveyed 163 civil and ...
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APIL chief urges government to give RTA portal a chance
The road traffic accident claims portal should be ‘given a chance’ before the government rushes to implement the Jackson civil justice reforms, the president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers warned last week. Muiris Lyons said that the RTA claims process, which was implemented on ...
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How a lawyer can change their specialist practice area
It is a common observation among middle-aged lawyers that the increasing need to specialise very early in a legal career has changed the face of the profession. Time spent in a more general or rounded practice has been much reduced, leading to a situation where lawyers are making key decisions ...
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Consumers back 'name and shame' complaints policy
Consumers are generally in favour of ‘naming and shaming’ law firms that are subject to complaints, but would only expect information to be published when a firm has had three complaints upheld against it in 12 months, according to research released today. The findings of a ...
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Lloyds Banking Group heeds Law Society confidentiality concerns
Lloyds Banking Group will no longer ask its conveyancing panel members to provide client account information, after the Law Society raised concerns with the lender over the risk of breaches of client confidentiality. The Society has advised firms that if any lender asks them for client ...
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Bar Professional Training Course students 'not up to it'
Too many people on the Bar Professional Training Course are ‘wasting their money’ because they are ‘not up to it’, the chair of the bar’s regulator declared last week. Lady Deech, chair of the Bar Standards Board, said the BSB would press ahead with its plans to introduce aptitude and ...
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Government's proposals for student immigration based on unreliable stats
by Nichola Carter, partner at Penningtons The government is currently reviewing around 30,000 responses to its consultation on international student migration, which closed on 31 January. It will shortly announce a raft of new policy measures in this area aimed at substantially reducing student immigration and ...
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Bridging the cultural gap between lawyers and clients
My business partner Tania Jeffery and I recently opened a new practice in Hampshire and our mission statement echoes the points raised by Law Society president Linda Lee in her article ‘Listening to our customers'.
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File blunders spark Legal Services Commission payment chaos
The Legal Services Commission is experiencing ‘significant delays’ in processing payments to firms after administrative blunders affected thousands of criminal case files, the Gazette has learned. Payment problems have occurred in relation to 4,000 files which were not allocated the necessary reference by HM Courts Service ...
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One in two children in care 'don't trust the courts'
Half of the children in care do not trust the court to make the right decision about their lives, according to a report by Children’s Rights director Roger Morgan, published by Ofsted. Of 58 children interviewed, 50% thought courts never or do not usually make the ...
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Civil procedure
Costs - Construction disputes - Mediation - Part 36 offers Rolf v De Guerin: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justices Rix, Elias, Tomlinson): 9 February 2011 The appellant (R) appealed against ...