All News articles – Page 1680
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News
Lend us a hand
After completion some lenders require the mortgage deed to be deposited with the Land Registry (eg The Mortgage Works), while others require the mortgage deeds themselves (eg NatWest).
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Office of Fair Trading probes insolvency lawyers' fees
Fees paid to insolvency lawyers are set to come under scrutiny by the Office of Fair Trading after the competition watchdog launched a probe into corporate insolvency. The City of London Law Society’s insolvency committee was due to convene to discuss the OFT’s market study as ...
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Silverbeck Rymer faces six-figure repayment to former miners
Liverpool firm Silverbeck Rymer could repay more than £100,000 to former miners after being rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for its handling of their government compensation claims. Partners James and Charles Rymer were reprimanded by the SRA for deducting £117,000 in total from 189 miners’ ...
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Legal ethics – past and present
In the first of three articles for lawgazette.co.uk tracing the history of ethics and the legal profession, Mark Humphries describes the origins of legal ethics and how medieval regulation addressed the same issues that arise in modern-day practice
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Private equity investors focus on legal sector
Private equity investors are becoming much more interested in doing deals with law firms, a report on the Legal Services Act 2007 launched today has revealed. A study by public relations company Byfield Consultancy, in association with law firm Fox Williams, shows that private investors ...
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Criminal procedure
Assumptions – Breath samples – Driving while over the limit – Newton hearings Thomas Goldsmith v Director of Public Prosecutions: DC (Lord Justice Sullivan, Mr Justice Openshaw): 4 November 2009 ...
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Jack Straw urges magistrates to keep cases in own court
Justice secretary Jack Straw has called on magistrates to deal with more cases themselves rather than sending them on to the Crown court. Speaking at the Magistrates’ Association conference in Birmingham, Straw noted that the number of cases in the magistrates’ court fell by 9% in ...
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Lawyers praise ‘brave new world’ for mental health
Mental health lawyers have welcomed the publication of a government plan to support people with mental health problems in the criminal justice system. The government published its five-year delivery plan last week for implementing the Bradley Report’s 82 recommendations for improving the way people with mental ...
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Who is really writing this blog?
All the other bloggers are revealing their true identities, so why shouldn’t I? Here goes: I only pretend to be a journalist working on the Gazette. All that stuff I write about employment law and personal injury and mental health and lawyers in local government. It’s not the real me.
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Solicitors blamed for delays in conveyancing process
Homebuyers and sellers have blamed solicitors more than estate agents for delays during the conveyancing process, according to research published by the Office of Fair Trading. The consumer watchdog published four reports undertaken as part of its market study into home buying and selling. One showed ...
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Whistleblowing proposals could give ‘improper bargaining power’ to claimants
Government proposals on whistleblowing could give ‘improper bargaining power’ to claimants and allow serious allegations to escape investigation, employment lawyers have warned. Under proposals contained in a Department for Business Innovation & Skills consultation, whistleblowing claimants would be able to decide whether the employment tribunal should ...
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Bar Standards Board opens door to joint practices
Barristers and solicitors will be able to go into practice together as a first step on the post-Clementi road, following a historic meeting of the Bar Standards Board last night. The board met to consider recommendations from its working group on alternative business structures to determine ...
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Top City firms look to banks to cover further redundancy payouts
Top City firms are preparing for a possible second wave of job cuts by making sure they have secured adequate lines of credit from banks to cover further redundancy payouts, according to one of the sector’s major lenders. Meanwhile, mid-tier law firms are being squeezed ...
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Government: local authority mutual insurance companies
Pity really, everyone was having such a wonderful time. It was, as the saying goes, a swell party and one designed to save lots of money. But then, all of a sudden, there was a raid: the front door was kicked in, the music stopped and everyone had to go ...
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Demonstrating little benefit: the assigned risks pool is draining resources
This autumn has seen by far the most difficult professional indemnity insurance renewal for many years. The number of firms in the assigned risks pool (ARP) – the system under which solicitors who have been unable to obtain insurance on the open market are given temporary ...
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SRA moves to scrap assigned risks pool
The Solicitors Regulation Authority will recommend abolishing the assigned risks pool in a consultation to be launched today. The regulator also wants to make it easier for struggling law firms to be taken over rather than shut down.
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Amending the Code by the back door
As your readers will be well aware, practising solicitors are currently bound by a Code of Conduct which runs to more than 200 pages. The code is being regularly amended, often making it very difficult for solicitors to know what regulatory rules they have to obey on any given occasion.
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Conservatives pledge to apply brakes to alternative business structures
A Conservative government would seek to slow down the introduction of alternative business structures, shadow justice minister Henry Bellingham revealed last week. Describing ABSs as ‘one more assault on the high-street solicitor’, Bellingham (pictured) predicted that big names would enter the market and cherry-pick the more ...
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The best advice on how to prepare for a legal services revolution
As firms begin to emerge from the recession in 2010, they may feel they want to get their breath back before tackling the next challenges that face them. But as any law firm consultant will tell you, now is the time to get lean, efficient and in shape to deal ...
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Solicitors issue advice warning over child neglect cases
Solicitors representing children in cases of chronic neglect are being obliged to act without the advice of a guardian or social worker, lawyers warned this week. A shortage of guardians at the Children and Family Courts Advisory Service has led to courts directing solicitors to appoint ...