All News articles – Page 1751
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News
Baby P review could end child care court fees
Local authority solicitors have welcomed a government decision that could lead to the ending of court fees for child care proceedings. A review of fees is one of 58 recommendations in Lord Laming’s report into the protection of children commissioned following the 2007 death of London toddler ‘Baby P’. ...
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The French estate of an English client: practical aspects
A case study handling the issue of inheritance between England, Wales and France We are to consider the inheritance of the estate of an Englishman deceased in England and owning property in France. The ...
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Jack Straw and legal aid
Let us be grateful to the lord chancellor at least for his frank warning that lawyers dependent on state funding would be ‘wise to reconsider’ their expectations of earnings (see [2009] Gazette, 12 March, 1).
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Legal aid lawyers are paying the price for economic disaster
The principal lesson of the financial crash – that markets are not always the best solution for all areas of society – appears lost on Jack Straw (see [2009] Gazette, 12 March, 1). As trillions of pounds are thrown at banks, it seems that legal aid practitioners must pay the ...
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Tories consider private solution to legal aid shortfall
A future Conservative government may look to the private sector to top up the legal aid budget, the Gazette has learned. Tory policymakers are considering how the UK’s legal aid budget could be financed if they take power at the next general election. Earlier this month, ...
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NSPCC – legal aid cuts ‘risk miscarriages of justice’
Children’s charity the NSPCC has warned that government proposals to cut legal aid for vulnerable children and families would ‘risk miscarriages of family justice’. NSPCC lawyer Barbara Esam said: ‘The proposed, repeated cuts in legal support in family law cases comes at the worst possible time, ...
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Mr Grumpy piles on the agony
Judges don’t always have it their own way, writes John Moore, of Dixon & Templeton in Hampshire. When Moore started articles in 1959, he recalls sitting in a Court of Quarter Sessions presided over by a terrifying recorder whose demeanour suggested the possibility of suffering ‘a recurring and somewhat unpleasant ...
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Age-old concern
Joyce Glasser’s letter about students and newly qualifieds in their late-30s or 40s and 50s, captured the situation in a nutshell (see [2009] Gazette, 19 February, 11). I am a newly qualified solicitor who was also made redundant on qualification due to organisational structure changes.
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Free movement of people and adopting EU provisions
To be free or not to be – that is the question for the UK government as it continues to struggle to implement the free movement of people provision, some 50 years after the establishment of the EU.
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Court actions soar over bad debts
Top corporate firms are increasingly resorting to court action to secure unpaid legal fees, the Gazette has learned. In the past six months, the number of cases filed in the Queen’s Bench division of the High Court between top-50 firms and clients has more than doubled, ...
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Murder conviction quashed after 27 years
A man who has spent the last 27 years in prison had his conviction for rape and murder quashed by the Court of Appeal today (18 March). Sean Hodgson, now 57, was given a life sentence in 1982 for the murder of barmaid Teresa de Simone, ...
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First ABSs expected by 2011
The first alternative business structures should open for business in 2011, the chief executive of the Legal Services Board predicted last week. Chris Kenny told the Association of Law Costs Draftsmen’s annual conference in Harrogate that the recession would encourage new ventures.
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Balance sheets, waste technology and Formula 1
On the button: City firm Taylor Wessing advised Ross Brawn, former boss of the Honda GP Formula 1 motorsport team, on buying the Honda team to create Brawn GP F1. The new team has taken on Honda’s drivers from last year, Britain’s Jenson ...
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Hello, new world
Starting a new blog is always tense – it’s a bit like jumping off a high board at the swimming pool, in that you know it’ll get easier afterwards, but you also know that if you get it wrong, it will hurt, and probably quite a lot.
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Lawyers won't play ball on audit caps
In promoting the benefits of deregulation and global free trade, this week’s report from the Professional Services Global Competitiveness Group sounds a discordant note.
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Straw's bogus panaceas hide a failure to invest
Gazette readers have reacted furiously to Jack Straw’s provocative assertions about the future of legal aid, as my postbag attests.
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Employment law: accrual of annual leave and sickness absence
For the modern solicitor it has become essential to develop the ability not only to be all things to all people, but also to be in many different places at the same time.
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Memory lane
Poor Persons ProcedureIt remains only for the Council once again to urge every member of the Society to come forward and share in the conduct of poor persons' cases. All may rest assured that the greatest possible care is taken by the Committees ...
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Landlord/tenant
Contracts – Consent to assignment – Leaseholds – Sale by auction Landlord Protect Ltd v St Anselm Development Co Ltd: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Waller, Wilson, Stanley Burnton): 20 February 2009 ...
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Should have gone to Lexsavers
The justice secretary has seen the future – with a little help from Specsavers – but will it work? It would have been better had Mr Straw’s remarks not been predicated on a patently false premise: that increases in the £2bn legal aid budget are ‘unsustainable’. ...