All News articles – Page 1779
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News
No rights without responsibilities?
The government says it wants to take its proposed bill of rights and responsibilities to the country for debate. This administration has a less than exemplary record of listening to people who respond to its public consultations, but for the moment we must take ministers at their word.
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SRA transparency
A solicitor complained that six months after the Solicitors Regulation Authority had found two ‘minor infractions’, the firm’s partners were told by phone that they had been reprimanded and had to pay £500 in costs (see [2009] Gazette, 9 April, 9). The solicitor was unhappy the decision would be published ...
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Exhibition celebrates 60 years of legal aid
Sixty years after the birth of legal aid, 83% of the general public say they have little or no knowledge of the scheme, according to new research. To fill the gap, and to mark the anniversary of the passing of the Legal Aid Act in July, the Legal Services Commission ...
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Law Society to shoulder 90% of the cost of Legal Services Board
The Law Society will have to bear more than 90% of the initial set-up and running costs of the Legal Services Board and Office for Legal Complaints under plans published last week. Proposals for a levy to raise £15.1m for the new bodies appear ...
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Vexatious requests, audit reports, data protection and disclosing legal advice
It is now four years since the Freedom of Information Act 2000 came into force. While the act is about opening up the public sector to more scrutiny through access to recorded information, parliament has recognised the importance of ensuring that public authorities are protected from vexatious requests that waste ...
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Amendments to the Civil Procedure Rules
Part 79The Civil Procedure (Amendment No. 2) Rules 2008 (SI No.3085) were made on 2 December 2008 and came into force on 4 December 2008.
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City giant announces job cuts
City firm Herbert Smith will cut up to 84 London staff and freeze salaries across its London office, the firm announced today (20 April). Up to 30 fee-earners will be made redundant as part of the cuts, while the pay freeze, which comes in to force in September, will ...
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Zero tolerance of ‘solicitor bashing’ of any kind
Tim Lawson-Cruttenden is chairman of the Solicitors Association of Higher Court Advocates In recent weeks the standard of solicitor advocacy has been the subject of ...
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Taylor Wessing asks staff to buy extra holiday
City firm Taylor Wessing is to cut up to nine associates and nine support staff and has asked all staff to buy extra holiday by means of a salary cut. The firm said today (21 April) that the latter proposal is ‘one of a number of ...
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Associate prosecutor fears
It is a long time since I practised criminal law, but I have been a civil courts judge for 16 years so I know the value of good advocacy anywhere. I would like to comment on the letter ‘For the defence’ from the chief crown prosecutor Barry Hughes...
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Olswang to make patent attorney partner in LDP move
City firm Olswang has become one of the first big corporate firms to take advantage of new business structure changes enabled by the Legal Services Act. The firm has applied to have one of its patent attorneys made a partner in the firm following the promotion ...
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The judiciary needs more solicitors to become judges
I am grateful to the Gazette for providing me with an opportunity to write directly to solicitors about judicial office. There is a considerable public interest in the availability of high-quality candidates for judicial appointment, from whichever branch of the legal profession they may come.
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Power in numbers: making sense of the numbers behind commercial litigation
There are ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’, said the Victorian politician Benjamin Disraeli (allegedly), but numbers and statistics can also help uncover the truth – or at least the facts.
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Environment initiatives, business enterprises and broadcast news
Green deal: National firm Addleshaw Goddard advised a number of banks, led by Bank of Ireland, on financing a construction project by the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority. The 25-year private finance initiative, worth an estimated £4bn, aims to boost recycling and reduce ...
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MoJ and Insurance Fraud Bureau to share data on fraud
Data on criminal syndicates and solicitors involved in personal injury compensation scams will be shared between the Ministry of Justice and the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) under a new agreement, the Gazette has learned. The agreement will allow the MoJ and IFB, the insurance industry-funded fraud ...
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Plan for chief legal officer splits local government solicitors
A proposal that every local authority be required to appoint a qualified chief legal officer has attracted split responses from 70 different organisations. The Law Society and Solicitors in Local Government have proposed a change in the law to create the new role, replacing that ...
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Top city firms tight-lipped on future of graduate training schemes
Two top City firms have remained tight-lipped over the future of their specialist graduate training schemes after asking prospective trainees to start work a year later than planned. Magic circle firms Clifford Chance and Linklaters, which have asked prospective trainees to volunteer to defer for a ...
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Class war still to be fought in the legal profession
The law and other professions remain closed shops to many from socially disadvantaged backgrounds (see my story this week on the Cabinet Office report in which this was revealed).
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How come it’s taken so long for a LinkedIn for lawyers?
Really interesting little spat going on over at Nick Holmes’s Binary Law blog about whether Martindale Hubbell’s 'Connected' social networking site for lawyers is any good/worth getting into/old before it’s even born, it seems.
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Family practitioners condemn the government’s flat-fee proposals
Practitioner groups have condemned as ‘disastrous’ and ‘ill-considered’ proposals to change the way family lawyers are paid, claiming they will leave vulnerable families and children without adequate representation. The Family Justice Council said plans to introduce a fixed-fee advocacy scheme for family legal aid cases from ...