All News articles – Page 1692
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News
Joint LA panel to save £1.5m
Six London boroughs have combined to slash almost £1.5m a year in legal fees. The London Boroughs Legal Alliance, which links lawyers from Harrow, Hammersmith & Fulham, Camden, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Kensington & Chelsea councils, aims to save £1.44m through a pioneering collaboration.
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SRA commissions £40,000 diversity research
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has commissioned research to find out why ethnic minority solicitors are over-represented in its regulatory decisions, the Gazette has learned. The £40,000 study, by business psychologists Pearn Kandola, will look at issues including the SRA’s processes, the career progression of ethnic minority ...
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Brussels simplifies rules on cross-border successions
The European Commission has today adopted a proposal that should greatly simplify the rules on successions with an international dimension in the EU. The aim is to make life easier for citizens by laying down common rules enabling the competent authority and law applicable ...
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Bruce Willis can help you improve your online image. Sort of
I went to see the new Bruce Willis movie at the weekend, Surrogate, and it brought to mind two legal marketing topics. For those of you who have not seen the film...
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The true cost of legal aid cuts
The legal services industry in the UK generates around £15bn a year, which is 1.3% of GDP, while public funding of legal services amounts to just over £2bn. Interestingly, I attended a presentation recently which pointed out that this sum is less than the combined annual fee income of two ...
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Will there be a global code of conduct?
I have just returned from the annual conference of the International Bar Association (IBA) in Madrid – the largest ever, with more than 5,000 lawyers from around the world. It wasn’t the best-designed conference to attend...
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Don’t give away the Crown jewels – hold on, where are those Crown jewels?
I see that that venerable London institution, the London Evening Standard, is becoming a freebie after 182 years of Londoners paying for it. The most interesting comment on this came from the Standard’s editor Geordie Greig...
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PII – problems and solutions
Having read the ‘Solution to the insurance crisis’ letter (1 October) it occurs to me that, if those solicitors who actually meet their conveyancing clients (and there are still many of us), forwarded the copy passport and driving licence or other ID ...
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Ode to nowhere
On no – what have we done. After being roundly castigated for describing conveyancing and probate as ‘prosaic’, the Gazette coupled a shamefaced apology with a tongue-in-cheek plea for poems celebrating those undervalued disciplines. And still they come. This week Peter W Marsh, of Peter ...
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Lovells ‘in US merger talks’
City firm Lovells and US firm Hogan & Hartson are discussing a merger to create a firm with combined revenues of more than £1bn, according to reports. The firm would comprise 2,500 lawyers and would be among the 10 largest in the world if the tie-up ...
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Memory lane
Describing the decorum of a past National Conference. Book review of Lawyer Heal Thyself, a divorce lawyer with marital issues. Law Society’s Gazette, October 1969 ...
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Homeward pound
They say in business that Cash is King, but at Brixton firm Ziadies it’s not only notes bearing the Queen’s head that are legal (sic) tender. The firm says it accepts a new local currency, the Brixton pound, or the B£, as valid payment for oaths and affidavits. The initiative ...
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Title hijack
I may be alone but I was not aware, with the coming into force of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, that solicitors will no longer bear the illustrious title of ‘Solicitor of the Supreme Court’.
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Factory flaw
The newly announced Claims Process for RTA claims valued up to £10,000 is the latest attack on the rights of those injured in road traffic accidents.
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London and the south-east are learning from the lessons of the downturn
Money is still being made in London and its environs, with a recent bellwether survey suggesting that large law firms – of which the region has more than its fair share – are ‘over the worst’.
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Offloading toxic debts and drug sales
Toxic debt: Magic circle firm Slaughter and May and US firm Sullivan & Cromwell advised Barclays on offloading £7.5bn of toxic debt to offshore hedge fund Protium Finance. Protium’s management company C12, composed of former Barclays bankers, will be paid £240m in fees ...
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Muttley crew
As lawyers know, when the Legal Services Act 2007 comes fully into force, they will be able to choose from lots of different ‘vehicles’ in which to operate. Speaking at the Young Barristers conference last weekend, Robin Tolson QC of London’s Outer Temple, clearly a fan of the Wacky ...
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Fixed costs folly
The news from the current Civil Litigation Costs review by Lord Jackson becomes more depressing by the day. Despite the fact that raising the small claims limit has been debated fully in the recent past, the threat is being made again...