All News articles – Page 1675
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Europe appoints new justice head
Europe has appointed its first commissioner to hold a separate justice portfolio, taking a ‘step in the right direction’ towards separating the conflicting demands of justice and security.
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Any claim to stamp duty land tax on goodwill should be appealed
Goodwill is produced by, and only by, people and not by things they use in business, but confusion reigns. The purpose of this article is to expose the pretence of clothing real property, land, with the value of goodwill, which is a species of personal property.
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Anger over 'cost-cutting' plans for serious criminal cases
Solicitors and barristers have reacted with anger to last-minute ‘cost-cutting’ proposals on pay for the most serious criminal cases, which they say ‘drive a coach and horses through two years of patient and careful negotiation’. A Legal Services Commission consultation on fees for very high ...
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Letting it all out
You don’t often see grown men cry, unless you count Paul Gascoigne (pictured). And you especially don’t see lawyers crying, especially not in public, and especially not in the courtroom. But that, it turns out, is just in the UK, where we are too reserved and repressed to really let ...
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Criminal legal aid firms threaten boycott of BVT pilot
More than 120 criminal legal aid firms will refuse to take part in Legal Services Commission plans to pilot best value tendering (BVT) unless they are indemnified against transfer of undertaking, protection of employment (TUPE) actions arising from it, the Gazette has learned. The commission wants ...
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Law Society threatens legal action over complaints staff
The Law Society has threatened the government and the new solicitor complaints handling body with legal action following their decision not to automatically reassign staff from the Legal Complaints Service (LCS) to the new Office for Legal Complaints (OLC). The functions of the LCS are to ...
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Act in haste, repent at leisure
It is unfortunate that the present consultation on the assigned risks pool poses only narrow questions. The Solicitors Regulation Authority appears to have made up its mind already. We need a thorough analysis of the problems – and an open mind.
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MoJ fails to answer parliamentary questions about external legal spending
The Ministry of Justice has declined to give full answers to a string of parliamentary questions on its spending on external services. Pete Wishart, Scottish National Party MP for Perth and Perthshire North, asked how much the MoJ had spent on external legal advice since it ...
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Surge of merger activity at top-100 firms
Three-quarters of top-100 law firms have been approached by other firms with a view to merging this year, new research has suggested. However, a fifth of firms unsuccessfully tried to complete a merger over the past year, according to a survey by accountancy and financial services ...
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Generation gap
It came as a breath of fresh air to read in last week’s leader how as a profession we complain that we are no longer respected, while, on the facing page, a letter from Peter S Hughes confirmed his rugged independence and refusal to enter into referral fee arrangements.
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Government moves could hit City pay packets
Perhaps London’s investment bankers are wishing they’d chosen a career in corporate law instead. Alistair Darling looks set to come down heavily on banker bonuses in his pre-budget speech today, with commentators predicting a super tax on bonuses in excess of the impending 50% income tax for high earners.
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Law Society Charity donates £369,000 to good causes
The Law Society Charity donated £369,000 to good causes over the past year despite the recession, it announced today. Its accounts for the 2008/09 financial year showed a 3.4% drop in grants made compared to the previous year. The charity supports organisations ...
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What to watch in invoice finance
Invoice finance has grown enormously in the last decade after the banks had finally understood that they could not easily obtain a fixed charge over book debts. Rather than rely solely on a floating charge, banks realised that the safest way of financing the cashflow of ...
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Ethics and the legal profession, part three
In the last of three articles describing the history of ethics and the legal profession, Mark Humphries looks at the development of professional regulation and considers future ethical challenges
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The ‘first’ justice commissioner – a three-minute guide
Who? Viviane Reding has just been appointed as the commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship in José Manuel Barroso’s new European Commission. As such, she will be responsible for the lawyers’ portfolio, along with the many justice issues that the commission now deals with. She is the first to ...
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Sharing spaces for lawyers may work, but only if lawyers want them to
I was travelling home on the tube the other day and the chap next to me was tapping away on a Windows Mobile device. He looked like an IT type so I engaged him in conversation. Nice fella – turns out he was working on a government project to create ...
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Worse for wear
The launch of a new book, Employment Law Practice: Strategies for Success, has got the somewhat rumpled Obiter a little worried. Along with rather earnest chapters on ‘mastering non-contentious law’ and the like, the book has a more entertaining section on what to wear. There is ‘nothing worse’, the four ...
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Memory lane
Law Society’s Gazette, December 1949 Notes of the monthWe regret to record the death, on October 30, of Mr G. E. Hawkins, who we believe was the oldest ...
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Maintaining our integrity
I write to comment on Michael R Moore’s letter about referral fees. I qualified in 1976 and can relate to and empathise with all that he recounts – with the exception of his final paragraph.
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Lawyers in UK and Ireland hit hardest by problems in property market
Only Ireland has suffered more job losses within its legal profession than the UK, the director general of the Law Society of Ireland said last week. Ken Murphy told delegates at a Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) meeting in Brussels that ...