All News articles – Page 1598
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News
Hundreds of Quinn firms yet to seek PII
More than half of the 1,900 sole practitioners who currently have professional indemnity insurance (PII) with Quinn Insurance have so far failed to apply to the broker attempting to find them alternative cover. The news comes after Danish insurer Alpha Insurance last week said that it ...
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What to do if your firm has yet to obtain PII
The uppermost issue for many law firms at present is whether they will manage to get professional indemnity insurance (PII) for the coming year, and how much it will cost. We are often asked how many firms we expect will fail to get PII on the ...
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Welfare law work and exclusion
I was pleased to read the comments of Mr Justice Collins, in connection with the ‘irrational’ approach of the Legal Services Commission regarding the social welfare law tender process. Unhappily, this is consistent with the experiences of my own firm.
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News
Government Legal Service facing deep cuts
The 2,000-strong Government Legal Service is facing job cuts of 20% to 40%, as government savings targets translate directly into headcount reductions, the Gazette has learned. The news comes as the Attorney General’s Office confirmed that government departments will also be seeking to ‘look critically’ at ...
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LSC extends family contracts pending judicial review hearing
The Legal Services Commission has confirmed that all current civil contracts will be extended for one month, after the Law Society won an expedited hearing of its judicial review last week. At a directions hearing last Friday, the High Court granted the Law Society’s application for ...
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LSC reverses contract decision following judge's warning
The Legal Services Commission has averted one legal challenge to its tender process by awarding a social welfare contract to a Birmingham firm which sought a judicial review of the LSC’s initial decision not to make an award.
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The record of the Legal Complaints Service
I read with interest your interview with LeO chief ombudsman Adam Sampson . As chair of the board of the Legal Complaints Service, I have worked closely with Legal Complaints Service chief executive Deborah Evans and her team to ensure that LeO gets off to the ...
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Colombia and human rights
Further to the article ‘UK lawyer delegation suffers Colombia rights rebuff’, I would like to inform you that the government and embassy of Colombia provided the delegation with assistance in arranging and confirming governmental meetings during their visit to my country in August.
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News
Manchester CLAS will ‘eclipse’ small practices
The Law Society has warned that Manchester’s new community legal advice service (CLAS) will drive small legal aid firms out of the market, and make conflicts of interest hard to avoid. Following a tender process that overran by nearly two months, the Legal Services Commission and ...
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The Law Commission wants to move from criminal to civil penalties
What is the criminal law for? That deceptively simple question was addressed recently in a masterly paper by Professor Jeremy Horder, issued just a few days before he completed his term as the commissioner responsible for advising ministers on reform of the criminal law. As a ...
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Top law firms reject conflict rules change
Top City law firms have rejected ‘foolhardy’ proposals to change the conflict of interest rules put forward by the profession’s regulator, warning it against making ‘rushed changes’.
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Scholarship to study law in France, Spain or Canada
Trainee and newly qualified solicitors have been given the chance to apply for a grant to study a postgraduate legal course in France, Spain or Canada. The Hubbard scholarship of up to £15,000 is available to trainees or newly qualified solicitors within three years of admission. ...
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Council first for LawWorks pro bono project
Lawyers at Sutton Council are to become the first local authority legal team to volunteer their services to the LawWorks pro bono project. The 14 solicitors and three barristers in Sutton’s legal team are signing up to the charity, which provides free legal help to ...
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News
Birth pangs
It seems that personal injury solicitors anxiously awaiting the outcome of Lord Young of Graffham’s ’elf and safety review, which is intended to check the growth of the compensation culture, may have to wait another week. If rumours that have reached Obiter’s ears are to be believed, those in the ...
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How Leeds law firms are battling the downturn
Times have been challenging for almost everyone in the Leeds legal market: from Fox Hayes, which went into administration last year, to members of the original ‘big six’ Leeds firms such as Hammonds, which made over 70 redundancies and had to close its conveyancing business, Hammonds Direct; to Lupton Fawcett ...
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Solicitors under fire from bar over referral fees
The new Criminal Bar Association chair has criticised solicitors for ‘abusing’ the referral fee arrangements for Crown court advocacy, claiming that solicitors are pocketing money for work done by barristers. In his first interview as CBA chair, Christopher Kinch QC told the Gazette: ‘The criminal bar ...
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Lib Dem peer attacks partners over tax avoidance
Some partners at certain magic circle law firms are still not paying their fair share of tax, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman claimed this week, after first raising the issue back in June. Lord Oakeshott said in the House of Lords then that, according to ‘a ...
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News
Altar-native career
Richard Taylor, partner at DLA Piper in Sheffield and the Gazette’s IP guru, has something of a passion for churches. So much so that he is currently on the box presenting a new BBC television series, Churches: How to Read Them, based on his own book of the same name. ...
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News
Hair on air
Watch out those readers who find the Direct Line telephone really annoying. A new inanimate object with a boisterous personality is about to hit our screens, and its creators have told Obiter they are planning to make it just as ubiquitous as the famous red phone. As lawgazette.co.uk reported last ...
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The Law Society will continue to fight over the legal aid tender
‘There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.’ So said US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in 1964. More than 45 years later we are still fighting to ensure access to justice for all. ...