All News articles – Page 1690
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News
New legal aid rates for family advocacy
The Ministry of Justice today announced new fixed advocacy rates for family legal aid, which harmonise the fees paid to solicitors and barristers. The new structure follows a lengthy consultation process and will see hourly rates replaced with standard fees. Barristers and solicitors will be paid ...
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Law Society warning on unregulated will writers
Unregulated will writers are causing havoc among members of the public and in some cases are failing to provide people with valid wills, the Law Society claimed today. According to the Society, many solicitors specialising in will writing, trusts and probate have been handed invalid and ...
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Money Claim Online and getting tough on debts
Sometimes, when calling in debts from friends, I mimic a silver screen drug lord calling in a debt from a business associate, promising a bloodbath of gun violence should he fail to pay up. It’s more like an unintentionally comic Tony Montana-in-Scarface type of threat, rather than a coolly menacing ...
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CPS consults on changes to prosecution code
The Crown Prosecution Service today launched a 12-week consultation on changes to the code for Crown prosecutors. The code sets out the principles that prosecutors must follow when deciding whether or not to prosecute an individual. The test set out in the code, and applied in ...
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‘Radical reform’ planned for assigned risks pool
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is soon to launch a consultation on ‘radical reform’ of the assigned risks pool, the Gazette can reveal. It is understood that proposals for consultation could include changes to the conditions for entry or even the demise of the pool. ...
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Oops, another EU lawyer training proposal
This is how policy comes about.I was scanning what I assumed was an innocuous resolution from the European Parliament on the future five-year programme for justice and home affairs (the so-called Stockholm Programme).
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How to get a better deal on your firm's mobile bills
You may have read that T-Mobile is being bought by Orange. As someone with a keen eye on the mobile market, it occurs to me that this little merger will take up to two years to get sorted. I suspect that in that time, with the resulting slightly chaotic administration ...
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Litigation funder lists on AIM
Litigation funder Burford Capital has raised £80m following a share placing on the London Stock Exchange’s alternative investment market (AIM). The placing means that Burford has become the second UK-listed third-party litigation funder, after Juridica Investments listed on AIM in December 2007 and raised £80m. Juridica ...
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SIF referendum
The solution to the professional indemnity insurance difficulties described by Jonathan Jacobs (see [2009] Letters, 24 September, 9) is to resurrect the Solicitors Indemnity Fund. The SIF regime may have had its faults but it was greatly preferable to what we have now.
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Sole practitioner survivor
The extinction of the sole practitioner has been prophesied for so many years now that the prophets of doom should by now be feeling a little self-conscious. Your own pages have seen some wonderfully confident predictions of disaster in the recent tough round of PII renewals.
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Rhymes and misdemeanours
The Gazette continues to atone for the sin of describing conveyancing and probate as ‘prosaic’ by featuring your poems on said disciplines. This week probate solicitor Elainne Lawrie, late of collapsed Wirral firm Lees Lloyd Whitley, on ‘dealing with the deceased’: ...
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Lost for words
A senior lecturer has called on lawyers to abandon complex expressions that are ‘more complicated than they need to be’ [see [2009] Gazette, 1 October, 1].
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Memory lane
Clarence Darrow, a famous American attorney once spoke for twelve hours and a letter concerning discrimination against female articled clerks. Law Society’s Gazette, October 1959 ...
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Knock knock
The annual conference of the Legal Aid Practitioners Group (LAPG) may seem an unlikely setting for joviality given the situation endured by many in the face of continued fee cuts. But, you’ve got to laugh, as they say. And Obiter was pleased to see this was something even the legal ...
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HIP overhaul
With a general election approaching, there is much talk about creating a genuinely sustainable alternative to home information packs (HIPs). Attention seems to be focusing on ‘building on HIPS’ and introducing a mandatory legal pack which, it is claimed, will bring about a faster and more certain homebuying process.
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High-flyers
When is a joke about disability and cruelty to animals acceptable? Answer: when it’s cracked by John Trundle, chief executive of charity Blind in Business. Trundle was welcoming guests to his An Eye for Talent project, aimed at helping law firms and others meet talented blind and partially sighted young ...
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Legal process outsourcing is ‘here to stay’
Legal process outsourcing (LPO) is ‘here to stay’ and attracting interest from investors, a leading practitioner claimed last week. Mark Lewis, head of outsourcing at City firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, said there are ‘a number of private equity providers knocking around the City offering quite a ...
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Software glitch
The new lasting power of attorney forms have been made available by the Office of the Public Guardian. Unfortunately, they have specifically blocked the ability for the practitioner to save the document and thus be able to amend it after minor errors have been found.
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Employment
Age discrimination – Retirement age R (on the application of AGE UK) (claimant) v Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills (defendant) & (1) Equality & Human Rights Commission (2) HM Attorney General (intervenors): QBD (Admin) (Mr Justice ...
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UN to help developing nations negotiate with western projects lawyers
Lawyers in developing countries could be given help when negotiating investment deals with City project lawyers under a UN initiative to bolster their bargaining power when human rights are at stake.