All News articles – Page 1797
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News
Medical costs on the up
The legal cost of defending doctors and other medical professionals against fitness-to-practice investigations by the General Medical Council has increased fifteen-fold, or 31% annually, over the last decade, according to the Medical Defence Union (MDU). In its annual report, the MDU, a charity founded in 1885 ...
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SRA 'open to racism charge'
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has left itself ‘open to the charge of institutional racism’ because of its failure to address concerns that it investigates a disproportionate number of black and minority ethnic solicitors (BME), according to a report by former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Lord Ouseley.
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Care in the legal community
This year’s Excellence Awards will recognise high-quality client care This year, firms that have demonstrated exceptional innovation and consistent excellence in the delivery of client services will be recognised at the Law Society’s Excellence Awards. The new Legal Complaints Service Award for ...
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Setting up shop: building a new family practice
Lawyers need to be more like entrepreneurs – that was the message legal business guru Professor Stephen Mayson gave during his speech at the Law London 2008 event. And there cannot be anything much more entrepreneurial for a solicitor to do than setting up their own firm. ...
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British female rowers win bronze at Olympics
Olympic rower Elise Laverick (right), who is set to join City firm Ashurst as a trainee solicitor, powered home to win bronze for Great Britain in the women’s double sculls in Beijing on Saturday alongside Anna Bebington. Laverick fought her way back to fitness after being the victim of a ...
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Wine column: best of British
In the mid-1970s Monty Python ran an Australian wine-tasting sketch with the punchline ‘bring your own bottle’. The studio audience cried with laughter. With names such as Kanga Rouge and Wallaby White just starting to appear on the British High Street, it was little wonder that its then fledgling wine ...
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Lawyer kicks off FA insurance battle
A sports lawyer is threatening to sue the Football Association (FA) for failing to insure club footballers against loss of earnings arising from injuries, the Gazette can exclusively reveal. The FA requires all clubs to have at least £5m of public liability insurance. However, it leaves ...
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AWS to canvass members over pay gap
The Association of Women Solicitors (AWS) is to survey all 17,700 of its members in an attempt to identify why female solicitors are paid less than their male counterparts, the Gazette has learned. The Law Society’s Strategic Research Unit pay survey, published in May, revealed that ...
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Arbitration
Conflict of laws – International law – Attachment orders – Expropriation – Freezing injunctions E.T.I. Euro Telecom International NV v (1) Bolivia (2) Empresa Nacional De Telecomunicaciones Entel SA CA: (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Tuckey, Lawrence Collins, Stanley ...
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Cartel case approaches
An innovative model for funding ‘risk-free’ group actions against business cartels could have its first court blooding this autumn, the scheme’s originators said this week. ‘Cartel Key’, launched by collective claimant specialist Cohen Milstein Hausfeld Toll and insurers FirstAssist Legal Protection, will remove a deterrent ...
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Care applications fall sparks safety fears
Applications for child care and supervision orders have plummeted by 25% since councils were forced to bear the full cost of court fees, prompting fears that vulnerable children are being inappropriately placed with relatives instead, the Gazette can reveal. Just 1,611 applications were made by councils ...
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Another coal porter
Obiter hears tell of another former Bevin Boy turned solicitor whose studies were interrupted because he was, like Robert Benjamin (see Obiter, 7 August), conscripted to work in Britain’s coal mines during World War Two. John Hostettler, an 83-year-old ...
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MoJ on alert over unregulated firm
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is seeking help in tracking down a claims-handling company that may have based itself overseas in a bid to avoid regulation, amid warnings that solicitors who take referrals from the company could face sanctions.
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Legal aid recovery threat
A six-figure claim lodged against a solicitor seven years after he gave up practice has raised the spectre of the Legal Services Commission (LSC) aggressively recouping historic legal aid funding, despite a partial amnesty agreed earlier this year. The commission has launched a High Court ...
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Plan of action
An assessment of Whitehall’s latest attempt to reform planning law, which features a controversial ‘one-stop-shop’ consent regime After several years wrestling with the question of developing a suitable regime to speed up the delivery of major infrastructure, the government has finally brought forward its proposals ...
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Legal action in the world of education
Solicitors play a major role on both sides when it comes to securing places in schools for children with special needs. For a section of the media, litigation against colleges, schools and universities has in recent years become another frontier of the so-called compensation culture. ...
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Sentencing
Human rights – Penology and Criminology – Inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment – Life imprisonment R v David Francis Bieber (AKA Coleman): CA (Crim Div) (Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, Mr Justice Pitchford, Mrs Justice ...
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Rules & revolution
How extraordinary that the chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority should state, in relation to non-lawyer managers, ‘there is little regulatory sense in requiring, for example, those who have worked within firms and already have a detailed understanding of the accounts rules to go on a prescriptive course'. (see ...
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Peak practice
This week it is solicitors on foot – and at all altitudes too. A team of six from regional firm Geldards scaled the three tallest peaks in the UK – Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon – and came home first with a time of 23 hours and 29 minutes. ...