All News articles – Page 1637
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News
Government cuts must not undermine the constitution
Forget for a moment the row over legal aid tendering – that is nothing compared with what is to come. Judicial review may be an appropriate response to a contracting cock-up, but how do we, as individual solicitors and as a profession, respond to the cuts that are to come?
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Dishing it out in court
When home secretary Theresa May recently indicated that anti-social behaviour orders could soon be deemed anti-social by the new government, Obiter put out a request to the profession for first-hand experience of unusual asbos. We received an intriguing response from a prosecutor in the north of England, revealing a fascinating, ...
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MoJ to review media reporting in family courts
The Ministry of Justice has told the Gazette that it will not commence legislation that would extend the media’s right to report family cases without ‘looking closely’ at the changes, amid pressure from family lawyers. Family lawyers have called on the government not to ...
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Rallying cry
It’s amazing to what lengths some solicitors will go to escape from the office. Manchester lawyers Chris Adams and Sean Daly, otherwise known as team ‘Freewheeling Palm Trees’, today set off on a 3,000-mile round trip to southern Italy in a 20-year-old Merc. The pair, who are being sponsored by ...
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Employment
Gross misconduct – Law firms – Unfair dismissal Wilson Devonald Ltd v S Suckling: EAT (Judge Serota QC, D Evans CBE, P Gammon MBE): 3 August 2010 The appellant employer ...
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Paralegal forces removal of posting from solicitorsfromhell website
A London paralegal has forced the removal of a ‘malicious and inaccurate’ posting on the solicitorsfromhell.co.uk website after issuing a claim for defamation against the owner, the Gazette has learned. Max Campbell, a paralegal at McCormacks, spotted the posting on 1 September, which related to his ...
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Religious freedom
One way the government could reduce spending, while promoting its ideal of the freedom of the individual, would be to abolish chancel repair liability. If more applications are made by parochial church councils (PCCs) for registration of notices against lay rectors’ titles, leading up to the registration deadline of 12 ...
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Is the Gazette stuck in a PC straitjacket?
A thought-provoking phone call this week from a solicitor (who wished to remain nameless, of which more below) about the Gazette leader column’s bullish stance on legal aid. It came in the context of this week’s events at the TUC, which is gearing up for a concerted battle over the ...
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Should lawyers get out more?
On any weekday, in reception areas from the high street to Herbert Smith, clients are giving their name, then waiting to see their solicitor. Depending on the firm, they might wait looking at a Howard Hodgkin poster in a clip frame, or wait looking at the genuine article – whatever ...
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Solicitors queue up to sue LSC
Pressure is mounting on the Legal Services Commission over its handling of the tender for civil legal aid contracts, as it faces a growing number of judicial review challenges to the process, and talks with the Law Society broke down.
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Positive process
In response to John Ford Solicitors’ letter, we have not reduced volume as part of our recent tender for low volume category legal services. New matter start volumes are consistent with those delivered from September 2008 to August 2009. Also, matter starts are ...
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For the record
For those following the gripping saga of Redruth solicitor J P Leaning and his quest for blanket permission from Ken Clarke to take a handheld recording device into any court – an update. Leaning has informed Obiter that he has still to receive a reply from the minister, who seems ...
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The spy who sued me
In this age of the long lens, BBC executives and MI5 heads cannot be too careful about what documents they leave sticking out of their briefcases. But it turns out that they are not the only ones who need to exercise ultra-caution when it comes to sensitive documents. In its ...
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Young legal aid lawyers call for quality
The Young Legal Aid Lawyers group has called on the government to put quality of service at the heart of any new legal aid scheme to safeguard the rule of law. In a briefing paper to the Ministry of Justice, which is carrying out a review ...
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MoJ consults on bribery prevention procedures
The Ministry of Justice has published draft guidance to companies on procedures to prevent bribery. The guidance is published under section 9 of the Bribery Act, which is due to come into force next April. The Bribery Act creates a new corporate offence of failure to ...
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Competition law and contractual interpretation
One of the more routine tasks of a competition lawyer is to review commercial agreements, or parts of agreements, in order to determine whether they unlawfully restrict competition. The Court of Justice in Commission v Anic Partecipazioni [1999] ECR I-4125 confirmed that the concept of agreements, decisions by associations or ...
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Why doesn’t everyone get a will?
Intimations of mortality, to adapt a phrase from William Wordsworth, concentrate the mind wonderfully on the need to prepare a will.
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Akzo ruling against in-house privilege in competition matters
The European Court of Justice has ruled that legal professional privilege does not apply to legal advice given by in-house lawyers in EU competition law investigations. Ruling in the Akzo Nobel case today, the ECJ said that an in-house lawyer, regardless of their membership of a ...
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Free publicity for legal services
Marketing legal services can be difficult and expensive, so wouldn’t it be nice if there was an easy way to get some priceless publicity for free?
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Happy 50th birthday to the CCBE
Fifty years ago last week, some lawyers participating in a conference of the Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA) in Basle, Switzerland, took a boat trip along the Rhine. On that trip, they fell to talking about how best to look after the interests of lawyers in the new Europe that ...