All News articles – Page 1708

  • News

    Class actions in employment tribunals called for by government research

    2009-08-06T00:00:00Z

    Unpublished government research obtained by the Gazette has called for opt-out class actions to be piloted in employment tribunals, so as to deal with the thousands of discrimination and equal pay cases clogging up the system. The report by Lexicon Ltd, whose publication has been delayed ...

  • News

    Information commissioner opens up access to property search data

    2009-08-06T00:00:00Z

    The information commissioner’s decision to allow free viewing of property search data held by local authorities has sparked fears that unregulated ‘cowboy companies’ will flood the search market. In a guidance note, the commissioner said that because most search data held by local authorities was environmental, ...

  • News

    Fox Hayes £1m FSA fine still unpaid

    2009-08-06T00:00:00Z

    The Financial Services Authority has yet to recover a penny of the £1m fine it levied against collapsed Leeds firm Fox Hayes for its part in a £15m ‘boiler room’ fraud, the Gazette can reveal. The City regulator fined Fox Hayes in February for failing ...

  • News

    Freedom of expression and the UK Supreme Court

    2009-08-05T00:00:00Z

    It cost £60m to create. Its annual running costs are expected to be £12.3m. And it replaces something that has been running perfectly well for more than 100 years.

  • News

    Commoditisation is for everyone, not just for Susskind

    2009-08-05T00:00:00Z

    Anyone involved in management at solicitors’ firms should have read or be in the process of reading Richard Susskind’s book, The End of Lawyers?

  • News

    Fancy a little law qualification forum shopping?

    2009-08-04T00:00:00Z

    I am at the American Bar Association (ABA) annual meeting in Chicago. Numbers attending are seriously down, and the ABA faces the same kind of financial squeeze as bars all over the world.

  • News

    Smart money

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    They say cleanliness is next to godliness. So according to the results of a survey carried out by national dry cleaners, Johnsons Cleaners, lawyers must be pretty close to the Almighty. They are apparently the second most unsullied professionals, only beaten by the uber-spruced financial services workers. An impressively hygienic ...

  • News

    Memory lane

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    Law Society’s Gazette, July 1939 Provincial Meeting, 1939Members attending the [Provincial Meeting in Worthing] will have admission during ...

  • News

    National interest

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    We read with interest the Benchmarks item on forced marriage protection orders (see [2009] Gazette, 23 July, 19).

  • News

    Front runners

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    It wasn’t just City pavements which took a pounding as a result of this month’s Standard Chartered City Race; this column also received its own beating from Baker & McKenzie associate Sally Onn, over last week’s remark that no lawyers made it into the top ten in the Standard Chartered ...

  • News

    Does the new legal landscape level the playing field for legal execs?

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    by Diane Burleigh, chief executive of the Institute of Legal Executives More than 60 legal executives have been taken into partnership by their firms, ranging from large international practices to small niche high street and legal aid practices. This ability to appoint the best to the ...

  • News

    Hypothesising the hypothetical director: an unpredictable opponent

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    Two interesting questions have emerged as relevant since the institution of part 11, chapter 1, sections 260-264 of the Companies Act 2006 (the 2006 act). They concern: (i) whether derivative claims will now have a better prospect of obtaining permission to continue; and (ii) how the courts will approach the ...

  • News

    Consumer law

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    Agency – Commission – Estate agents – Fariness – Landlords Office of Fair Trading v Foxtons Ltd: Ch D (Mann J): 10 July 2009 The claimant (OFT) sought declaratory ...

  • News

    Miners’ MP seeks probe into compensation payouts

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    The new chair of the All-Party Coalfield Communities Group has called on the government to investigate whether wide variations in compensation paid to injured miners may be explained at least in part by bad advice from solicitors.

  • News

    The politics of class struggle

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    There’s real irony in Alan Milburn’s report on Fair Access to the Professions. It reintroduces to the diversity debate a subject that is supposed to have been consigned to the dustbin of history (as Trotsky would certainly not have put it) by ‘third-way’ proselytisers like Milburn himself – class.

  • News

    Controversy continues over miners' claims

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    The work that solicitors have done under the mineworkers’ compensation scheme has attracted the attention of press, parliament and the public ever since details of wrongdoing began to emerge earlier this decade. But the debate has focused on two controversies: the millions of pounds that solicitors have earned, and the ...

  • News

    SOCA ignores call to give lawyers feedback on money laundering reports

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) intends to reject a recommendation that it should provide solicitors and other professionals with feedback when they make suspicious activity reports (SARs), the Gazette has learned. A House of Lords committee last week asked SOCA to provide ‘increased levels of ...

  • News

    BVT consultation

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    I write with reference to the letter in support of best value tendering (see [2009] Gazette, 23 July, 11). I am pleased to see that others recognise the potential benefits of best value tendering (BVT). I would, however, reassure Gazette readers that in developing our proposals we have spoken with ...

  • News

    Cashflow: is your IT supplier doing the business for you?

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    I have a thing about financial reports and consistency. The problem for IT suppliers is that everybody they supply wants something different. I can sympathise with that.

  • News

    ITV and Lovells form pro bono partnership

    2009-07-30T00:00:00Z

    ITV Legal has launched a new pro bono initiative with City firm Lovells as part of an innovative partnership programme with its panel law firms. The ITV Legal pro bono bank gives in-house lawyers at ITV the opportunity to take part in Lovells’ pro bono work. ...