All News articles – Page 1682
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Security guards do a difficult job
Clive Booth wants to know why visitors to court are asked to open their own bags and take out items as part of security checks. This is HMCS policy and is common practice among many organisations.
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Denton Wilde Sapte reports increase in fee income
City firm Denton Wilde Sapte has emerged as the top performer among firms that have reported half-year financial results so far, as the only firm to increase its fee income. Revenues at the firm for the six months to October rose 3.5% to £87.7m, up from ...
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Criminal procedure
Road traffic – Notices of intended prosecution – Postal service – Time limits Gidden v Chief Constable of Humberside: DC (Lord Justice Elias, Mr Justice Openshaw): 29 October 2009 The ...
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Unpaid volunteers not covered by discrimination legislation
Volunteers who give their time unpaid to charities are not covered by domestic or European equal treatment legislation designed to protect employees, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has ruled. The ruling arose from a claim brought by a citizens advice bureau volunteer who alleged she had ...
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Mid-tier corporate firms see profits plummet
Partner profits have plummeted by more than a quarter among a large swath of corporate firms as ‘acute pricing pressure’ and a fall in work take their toll on the bottom line, according to research by accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers published today. The PwC annual law firm benchmarking ...
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Law Society Council considers 'useful' Hunt review
Law Society president Robert Heslett last week praised Lord Hunt’s ‘very useful’ review of legal services regulation, welcoming the Tory peer’s core proposal for self-governance for firms that meet robust levels of internal compliance.
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Clients are not units of production
I refer to the recent letter from Hugh Barrett of the Legal Services Commission (‘Access is the number-one priority’, [2009] Gazette, 29 October, 11).
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Scrapping single renewal date for PII 'improbable', claims SRA
A move to scrap the single renewal date for professional indemnity insurance (PII) in 2010 is ‘improbable,’ the Solicitors Regulation Authority said this week. The SRA also warned that any shift to staggered renewals ‘will not in itself significantly alter the overall dynamics of the market’. ...
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Civil procedure
Banking and finance – Costs - Disclosure Timothy Duncan Earles v Barclays Bank plc: QBD (Birmingham) (Judge Simon Brown QC): 8 October 2009 The claimant (E) claimed damages in respect ...
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Students seduced by City firms may be in for a disappointment
I reckon sixth-formers spend too much time on legal websites and blogs, gazing dreamily at the magic million-pound-plus partner profit figures put out by top commercial law firms.
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LSC chairman defiant over family funding cuts
The chairman of the Legal Services Commission struck a defiant note in a debate on family funding cuts, stressing that ‘it is difficult to convince ministers and a hard-headed Treasury that they are getting value for money out of legal aid’. Sir Bill Callaghan was ...
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Yahoo! Europe’s general counsel Grainne Brankin
At a gathering of corporate counsel in Geneva earlier this year, Grainne Brankin gave a talk on ‘how to communicate in a crisis.’ This was probably because the general counsel at Yahoo! Europe’s new Swiss headquarters has experienced crisis first-hand.
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LCS braced for deluge of Scottish equal pay cases
A deluge of impending complaints over Scottish equal pay cases handled by the UK’s most prolific equal pay lawyer could swamp the Legal Complaints Service if they are sent across the border to England, the Gazette has learned.The complaints relate to compensation agreements drawn up by a law firm run ...
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‘Dire need’ for solicitors to undertake pro bono work
There is a ‘dire need’ for solicitors to undertake pro bono work, legal aid minister Lord Bach admitted this week. Addressing Monday’s joint national pro bono conference in London, which kicked off National Pro Bono Week, Bach suggested there should be a ‘professional expectation’ ...
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Legal Services Board consultation fuels research debate
by Jonathan Goldsmith, secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of EuropeIn a week in which the Legal Services Board has issued another consultation on alternative business structures, I want to speak about the importance of good-quality research before important policy proposals are made which may radically ...
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Call for better career information for law students
The Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) called for law students to be given better information about their career prospects to avoid disappointment as the number of people choosing a law degree hit a new high. Provisional figures from UCAS, the organisation that runs the university and college ...
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Why third-party interventions in the judicial process benefit democracy
by Roger Smithis director of law reform and human rights organisation JusticeAmnesty International did it in the Pinochet cases – with a somewhat unexpected result. The United Synagogue did it in the Jewish Free School case. Secretaries of state do it regularly; the attorney general occasionally. Justice does it about ...
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Gazette reporter wins Bar Council award
Gazette reporter Jonathan Rayner has won the print category of this year’s Bar Council awards for outstanding legal reporting. He received the accolade for a piece published on 5 March that addressed his son’s mental illness and journey through the health and justice ...
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Supreme Courts appointments process - need for change?
Arrangements to fill the 12th seat on the Supreme Court bench should be well under way by now, with no more applications being accepted for the vacancy.
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Pro bono conundrum and those left exposed by legal aid cuts
The pro bono protocol says work of this nature is ‘always only an adjunct to, and not a substitute for, a proper system of publicly funded legal services’. This can be a difficult distinction at times, but it has been the mantra of the pro bono movement as it has ...