All News articles – Page 1770
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Old Obiter's Almanac for 2009
JanuaryCity firm DLA Piper installs a multi-megawatt wind turbine atop its Noble Street office as part of scheme to cut carbon emissions to zero. Election fever mounts. ...
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SRA scraps solo fee hike
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has scrapped plans to charge sole practitioners an additional practising fee of £300. At a meeting of the SRA Board (see Gazette 18 December 2008), members indicated that a fee for sole practitioners should be less than the £180 payable by ...
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Human rights
Constitutional law – Aliens - Constitutional reform - EC law - Right to free elections- Sark R (on the application of Barclay & Ors) v Secretary of State for Justice & Ors: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Pill, Jacob, ...
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Prescribing a review of healthcare services
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said in his letter last week: 'Contrary to Dr Payne-James’s view, nurses are well-trained specialists and deliver high-quality care day in, day out'. I have to protest most strongly that Dr Carter ascribes to me views ...
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New guideline hourly rates are unveiled
New interim guideline hourly rates (GHR) were released in December - but could be slashed in future for personal injury and clinical negligence work if the committee that recommends levels decides that referral fees should not be built into them. The advisory committee on civil ...
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Property solicitors can shrug off the gloom
As I was watching television the other day, it occurred to me that there was one part of the UK which had been completely unaffected by the downturn. Here, the words credit crunch had never ever been mentioned, let alone caused difficulties. Where was this utopian land that had shrugged ...
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Family courts opened up
Family court hearings are for the first time to be open to the press, Justice Secretary Jack Straw told the Commons on Tuesday. From April, accredited media will be allowed to report hearings, unless the child’s welfare requires them not to be admitted, he said. ...
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Mediators need time to consider regulation proposals
Proposals for a regulation regime for mediation faltered last week when mediators told the Civil Mediation Council (CMC) they need more time to consider ‘ambitious’ plans. However members of the organisation, which represents civil and commercial mediators, approved a scheme to register workplace mediators to ...
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Sole practitioners condemn fee rise
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) will consider scrapping proposals to charge 4,500 sole practitioners an additional practising fee of £300 a year, the Gazette has learned.
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'Common sense' declarations victory for insurance scheme
The Court of Appeal has rejected a major challenge to the way claimant personal injury solicitors operate the Accident Line Protect (ALP) after-the-event insurance scheme. It held last week that being on the ALP panel and so having to recommend the Law Society-endorsed after-the-event (ATE) ...
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Festive update of a timeless classic
Prudence was dead. There was no doubt about that. The register of her burial was signed by the governor of the Bank of England. Jack Scrooge signed it. Old Prudence was as dead as a door-nail. Yet Scrooge never painted out Prudence’s name. Oh! He was ...
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Dame Hazel Genn warns of 'downgrading' of civil justice
Mediation ‘is not about just settlement’, said Professor Dame Hazel Genn earlier this month. ‘It is just about settlement.’ This pithy attack on received wisdom aptly summed up three excoriating Hamlyn lectures in which the professor of socio-legal studies at University College London stripped away some ...
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Bid by civil law notaries to protect their monopoly
The news item ‘CCBE warning on threat of notaries’ highlighted what is going on behind the scenes in Brussels (see [2008] Gazette, 4 December, 3). As vice-president of the Notaries Society of England and Wales, I attended the Forum on Judicial Cooperation in Civil Matters; ...
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Digesting the best reads for Christmas
SilksDick Francis, Felix FrancisMichael Joseph, £18.99 The doyen of British thriller writers returns (with the help of his son) for his 41st time over the jumps, this time colliding his beloved world of horseracing with that of m’learned friends.
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Bar paves the way for joint practices
The Bar Standards Board (BSB) is paving the way for barristers to go into practice with solicitors, but will leave regulation of the new legal disciplinary partnerships (LDPs) to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). In its second consultation on the implications of the Legal Services Act ...
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Loss on sale relief and bankruptcy of a residuary beneficiary
There is something of a credit crunch flavour to this update, as it covers bankruptcy and inheritance tax problems caused by falling values.
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Solicitors turned authors reveal what it takes to get published
‘I still feel like a lawyer who writes,’ says Neil White. ‘I’m trying to get my head around the idea that I’m a writer who’s a lawyer. It still feels like a bit of a hobby.’ But signing your second three-book deal with HarperCollins, as he has just done, should ...
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Bart-Stewart attacks JAC
The new chair of the Black Solicitors Network (BSN), Cordella Bart-Stewart, has launched a scathing attack on the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC), calling for an independent review of appointment processes. Bart-Stewart has refused to take part in what she calls ‘marketing exercises’ such as JAC ...
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Legal aid advocates to face quality assurance test
Quality inspections for publicly funded criminal defence advocates are on the horizon under plans unveiled by the Legal Services Commission (LSC) this week. The commission said it would test a ‘quality assurance scheme’ on some 250 barristers and solicitors at Crown Courts from February next year. ...
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Gradual adoption of e-conveyancing
I write in response to the letter from Andrew Bingham of 27 November (see [2008] Gazette, 27 November, 11). Land Registry has always made it clear that we intend to introduce e-conveyancing stage by stage, rather than in a one-off ‘big bang’ - an approach we ...