All News articles – Page 1684
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News
Solicitors should compete with the bar at all levels, including the judiciary
By District Judge Monty Trent, who sits at the Mayor’s and City of London Court. He is the new president of the Association of Her Majesty’s District Judges I threw away my business cards, diaries and timesheets and waved good riddance to the telephones on my ...
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Probate: another disputed will relating to a farm
There seems no end to the flood of disputed wills relating to farms. The most recent is Key v Key [2010] EWHC 408 (Ch).
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Most asylum seekers wrongly denied funded representation
Nearly 80% of asylum seekers are being wrongly refused publicly funded legal representation, according to a study published today by Devon Law Centre. Since July 2007, the Devon centre has had referred to it 75 asylum cases that had been refused controlled legal representation on the ...
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EC attacks claim that legal professional privilege is a fundamental right
The European Commission has argued that any claim that legal professional privilege is a fundamental right under EU law is ‘superficial’. In the Akzo Nobel appeal hearing at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in February, the commission also argued that in-house lawyers could not be ...
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Expansion of barristers’ role following relaxation of bar rules
The Legal Services Board has approved a relaxation in the bar rules that will allow barristers to take advantage of the Legal Services Act 2007. Following the LSB’s approval of the Bar Standards Boards’ applications to relax the bar’s Code of Conduct, barristers will now be ...
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Memo to self: must do better
A recent review of the Crown Prosecution Service in London rated its standard of performance ‘poor’ in 12 of the 32 London boroughs. So grievous were the failings outlined in the report by HM CPS Inspectorate, that it concluded defendants in the capital were more likely to walk free because ...
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‘Tesco law’ will put an end to hourly billing, says Lord Neuberger
‘Tesco law’ will put an end to hourly billing and lead to ‘fixed price deals’ for litigation, the master of the rolls Lord Neuberger predicted last week. Speaking at the Personal Injuries Bar Association conference, Neuberger said that the Legal Services Act 2007 would do much ...
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Turning a blind eye to EastEnders
Obiter is pleased to note that nobody spotted the frankly shocking error in last week’s issue. It was of course Archie, not Alfie, Mitchell who was murdered by that nasty Stacey Slater. Clearly members of the profession have far better things to do ...
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Blundering on
Following last week’s ‘final’ episode of the popular dictation blunders series, soft-hearted old Obiter has caved in to pleas for just one more instalment. Here are a few more amusing leaps of logic made by legal secretaries. Mike Thomson, director at Arnold Thomson in Towcester, Northamptonshire, recalls: ‘Years ago when ...
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Rules breaches and professional misconduct – where to draw a line?
Time was, not very long ago, when a visitor to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal would be presented with a diet of thefts from client account, serious Accounts Rules breaches, or solicitors who for one reason or another could no longer run their practices. Today, the same visitor might well see ...
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Consumer panel calls for competence test for lawyers
Lawyers should undergo five-yearly competence testing and there should be peer review of the advice they provide to clients, the chairwoman of the Legal Services Consumer Panel has said. Dianne Hayter said continuing professional development was an insufficient check of quality, and she would like to see a more formal ...
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PI solicitors to mount legal challenge to RTA claims process
A collective of personal injury solicitors is planning a legal challenge against the Ministry of Justice over its new road traffic accident (RTA) claims process, the Gazette has learned. The Accident Compensation Solicitors Group (ACSG) claims that fixed costs under the new process ‘have not been ...
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SRA scraps plans to change conflicts rules
Far-reaching plans to allow law firms to advise rival clients on the same deal have been shelved by the Solicitors Regulation Authority following ‘significant opposition’ from senior in-house lawyers. Relaxed conflict of interest rules were widely expected to be written into the SRA rulebook shortly after ...
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Civil procedure
Personal injury – Costs – Fraud – Judgements Martin Raymond Owens v Mark Noble: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Sedley, Elias, Lady Justice Smith): 18 March 2010 The Court ...
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MPs spearhead undersettlement claims drive for former coal miners
Solicitors behind a website aimed at gathering allegedly undersettled coal health compensation claims have begun running seminars for former coal miners with the backing of local MPs. North-east firm Ingrams and sole practitioner Neil Hudgell, who together run undersettlement website claimagain.com, hosted a seminar for more ...
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Law firms need to work hard in the face of commoditised legal providers
A couple of weeks ago Marketlaw made a presentation to the first Quality Solicitors national conference...
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Prosecution defence
Your story ‘"Justice on the cheap" sparks outcry’ (See [2010] Gazette, 18 March, 1) paints a wholly inaccurate picture of Crown Prosecution Service associate prosecutors (APs).
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MoJ publishes details of firm meetings to promote transparency
The Ministry of Justice has published details of the law firms and other external groups it held meetings with in the last quarter of 2009, as part of a new policy of greater transparency. The document reveals that lord chancellor Jack Straw met nine large legal ...
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New family practice direction promotes mediation
A new practice direction that will encourage parties in family proceedings towards mediation comes into force today. The president of the Family Division released the new Private Law Programme practice direction last week, with greater emphasis on conciliation. Under the new ...
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Nice little earner, me Lord
Obiter would rather be a judge than a miner, and we have the Latin (as the name suggests). Indeed, to quote the late Peter Cook, we have the Latin for the judgin’ (Oxford and Cambridge A-level, 1987). Sitting in yer nice warm guildhalls ...