All News articles – Page 1603
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News
Everyone loses
I am a solicitor specialising in mental health law. Last week a hospital administrator asked me to represent a patient. It became apparent that the patient did not want me to represent her but wanted to use the solicitor who has represented her for the last seven years. This solicitor ...
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Worse even than the LCS?
It may be difficult for many consumer-advising solicitors to imagine a service much more hostile to, and biased against, solicitors than that offered by the unqualified advisers at the Legal Complaints Service, forwhom ‘service-related complaint’ often appears to translate to ‘opportunity for solicitors to open their chequebooks, regardless of the ...
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Obiter dictaphone
Criminal defence solicitor Jeremy Leaning cc’d Obiter on this letter to justice secretary Ken Clarke. He promises to keep us posted of the minister’s response. Dear SirPermission to bring a handheld voice recorder/dictation machine into courtOn 4 August I attended East Cornwall Magistrates’ Court at Bodmin ...
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Decimal point
Obiter was taken aback by readers’ reaction to the Gazette’s recent front-page headline, ‘Family law "decimated" by LSC tender’. Quite right, you might think – after all, it is appalling that so many firms should have lost their family legal aid contracts. But ...
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Cyril Glasser remembered
The Gazette’s report of the death of Professor Cyril Glasser did not allude to the fact that he was an outstanding and much-loved law teacher. Some of our members attended his seminars at University College London, where he delivered weekly lectures on civil procedure with specific ...
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Criminal law
Acquisition of criminal property – Fraudulent dealing – Mens rea – Money laundering R v Michael Geary: CA (Crim Div) (Lord Justice Moore-Bick, Mrs Justice Rafferty DBE, Judge Gilbert QC): 30 July 2010 ...
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Solicitor comparison websites are an opportunity (though prices will fall)
The launch of the solicitors’ comparison website wigster.com, reported by the Gazette, is likely to engender polemic reaction from within the profession.
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Social welfare warning over Manchester CLAS delay
The delayed timetable for Manchester’s new Community Legal Advice Service (CLAS) will make it impossible for some clients to obtain advice on social welfare problems, the Law Society has warned. The Legal Services Commission told the Gazette it will announce the bidders who have won contracts ...
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Firms seek to launch High Court challenge to LSC tender process
Some 31 firms across the north-east have joined forces in a bid to launch a High Court challenge to the Legal Services Commission’s recent family tender process, the Gazette has learned. The group of firms in Teesside, Durham and Newcastle, led by Helen Scourfield, associate at ...
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Establishing causation when an injury has more than one cause
Where an injury could have had more than one cause, what must be proved to establish causation? This issue has engaged the House of Lords on several occasions, and two differing answers have been forthcoming. The differing and inconsistent tests are categorised as the ‘material contribution’ test and the ‘but ...
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Be careful what you wish for
The Gazette’s opinion of 5 August is headed Big bang theory. There is already a ‘big bang’ going on in the profession with regard to access to justice for clients.
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Call to SRA to loosen solicitor conduct rules
The Legal Services Consumer Panel has called for the Solicitors Regulation Authority to scrap the conduct provisions that prevent a solicitor from acting for both seller and purchaser, and for both lender and borrower in a conveyancing transaction. Responding to the SRA’s current consultation on its ...
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Exclusive: Legal price comparison site set to break new ground
Law firms have been invited to register for free on what is claimed to be the first legal services price comparison website to give consumers instant details of costs. Nick Miller, who has practised in the Hull area as a high street practitioner for 22 years, ...
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Professional indemnity insurance boost for sole practitioners
Travelers, the second-largest professional indemnity insurer, has struck an exclusive agreement with Quinn’s former broker, Prime Professions, to offer cover to sole practitioners left in limbo by Quinn’s expected departure from the market. Quinn presently insures around 1,900 sole practitioners and about 1,000 small firms.
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Chancery Lane in legal bid over family tender
The Law Society is preparing a high court challenge against the Legal Services Commission’s family tender process. Chancery Lane today informed the LSC of its intention to seek a judicial review of the exercise, which has slashed the number of firms able to do family law ...
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Gazette seeks nominations for Legal Personality of the Year Award
The Gazette is looking for legal professionals who are ‘influential, inspirational and in the public eye’ for its inaugural Gazette Legal Personality of the Year award, with just over a week to go until the deadline for nominations. The award aims to recognise those who have ...
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August is proving to be a busy month for small and medium-sized firms
Not so long ago, the August hiatus was a soporific experience for the Gazette. Just two issues and no interactive website to tell you about real-time developments – not that there often were many, mind you, as the profession’s great and good decamped to southern Europe.
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Challenging arbitration awards
One of the fundamental policy reasons behind the enactment of the Arbitration Act 1996 was the need to allow parties to resolve their disputes through arbitration and without judicial intervention.
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JAG plan for advocate reaccreditation 'every five years'
All criminal solicitor-advocates and barristers including Queen’s Counsel would face compulsory reaccreditation every five years under proposals put forward by the Joint Advocacy Group (JAG) last week. The JAG was established by the Bar Standards Board, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and ILEX Professional Standards to develop ...
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Law firm found to have broken ABS rules
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has found that a law firm overstepped the rules on alternative business structures in an arrangement with an outsourcer. Publishing an investigation into the agreement between Bradford, Glasgow and Newcastle firm Optima Legal and outsourcing company Capita, the SRA said that ‘while ...