All News articles – Page 1787
-
News
Corporate firms need regulatory group, says Smedley
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is not up to the job of regulating corporate law firms and needs to be fundamentally restructured to equip it for the task. That is the key conclusion of Nick Smedley, the former senior civil servant commissioned by the Law Society to ...
-
News
Customer service is not just for restaurants
Here’s something I bet you never do – call up your own law firm and pretend to be what support people call ‘a wasp in a bottle’. Law firms should know all about customer service.
-
News
Database survey warns of legal risks
People who take the government to the European Court of Human Rights for mishandling personal data should not have to risk paying the state’s costs if they lose, a landmark survey of government IT programmes said this week. Database State, published by the Joseph Rowntree ...
-
News
Trespassing in the public interest; functional entanglement
A Birmingham city councillor was found by the Administrative Court to have breached the council’s Code of Conduct...
-
News
Ready for what, exactly?
A conference organised by the Advice Services Alliance contained some blunt messages for the Legal Services Commission and its master, the Ministry of Justice.
-
News
Sports sponsors, media moves and fashion sales
Bigger splash: British Swimming, the sport’s national governing body, announced a £15m sponsoring partnership with British Gas. In-house teams advised British Gas and British Swimming, while English governing body ASA was separately advised by Leicester firm BHW. Swim Wales was advised by Swansea ...
-
News
Fire forces move of tribunal hearings
Tribunal hearings at Field House, off Chancery Lane, will move to Taylor House, Rosebery Avenue for a ‘considerable time’ following a major fire last week. Some 75 firefighters and 15 appliances fought the blaze at the building, which houses asylum and immigration tribunals and the patents court. None of the ...
-
News
Into the firing line?
In the show’s best tradition, The Apprentice contestant Anita Shah doesn’t come over as a shrinking violet. But the ‘self-confessed perfectionist’ has a novel strategy for getting ahead in the competition to impress Sir Alan Sugar. Shah reckons that you can be successful by investing ...
-
News
Future perfect?
Your otherwise excellent article on the impact of the recession on the north-west legal scene (see [2009] Gazette, 19 March, 14) was marred by an error regarding the alleged lack of legal training providers in the heart of the city.
-
News
Professional services get their own share index
The world’s first stockmarket index for professional services firms was launched this week at the City headquarters of magic circle firm Allen & Overy. A key aim of the initiative is to educate analysts and institutional investors about the potential benefits of investing in ...
-
News
LDPs go live
The revolution in legal services provision heralded by the 2007 Legal Services Act officially gets under way this week with the advent of legal disciplinary practices. For the first time, law firms can be owned by different types of lawyers, and a proportion of non-lawyers. ...
-
News
The history of the Ponzi scheme
The arrest of financier Bernard Madoff on suspicion of running a $50bn fraud offering to pay a steady if suspicious 12% return on investments in good and bad times has had everyone nodding their heads wisely saying, ‘Oh, yes, a Ponzi scheme’. But how many know who Ponzi was or ...
-
News
Turning to the index
The Gazette did not find its front page hard to fill this week, what with the Smedley report and Abbey’s bombshell for conveyancing firms. It is just possible, however, that the week’s most significant development in respect of legal business is the establishment of the world’s first stockmarket index for ...
-
News
Table manners
Another tale of old-school judiciary reaches us from Andrew Firman of Carter Lemon Camerons in Aldersgate St, London. A nervous articled clerk appears for the first time before the Master and, seeing a handy space on the table in front of him, deposits his bag thereon. ‘Young man,’ booms the ...
-
News
Pay for our offices
I am very encouraged by Jack Straw’s announcement that he thinks it entirely proper that lawyers are paid decent rates and his assertion that we should not expect to be paid more than public sector employees.
-
News
SRA responds to Smedley
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has delivered a measured response to the Smedley report, published today. The chair of the board, Peter Williamson, said he ‘welcomes Nick Smedley's contribution to the wider debate on the future regulation of legal services’.
-
News
Professional managers must be accepted into law firms, and fast
Given that the Code of Conduct now requires law firms to have in place a proper management structure, how well is this really being accepted? And how well is this being implemented?
-
News
Logo bill is a sign of the times
Late last year [2008, Gazette, 20 November, 3], the Lord Chancellor’s Department revealed the logo for the new Supreme Court. Readers with an interest in heraldry will recall its emblematic depiction of the UK’s three jurisdictions embraced by a symbol representing both Libra and omega. Now the Tories’ Dominic Grieve ...