All News articles – Page 1803
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News
Practice Q&A: Keeping it clean
Can I delay accounting for and paying VAT to HM Revenue & Customs on clients’ bills until I have received payment from the client? No. The effect of HM Revenue & Customs Notice 700 is to make unlawful and ineffective the practice of a solicitor writing ...
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Civil procedure
Costs – Paper applications – Protective costs orders – Setting aside – Application of principles for making orders – Procedure in Court of Appeal R (on the application of Compton) v Wiltshire Primary Care Trust: CA (Civ Div) (Lords Justice Waller, Buxton, Smith): 1 July 2008 ...
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City lawyers ‘earn ten times more’
Top City lawyers earn more than ten times the national average wage for legal professionals, a new survey has suggested. The lawyer members of wealth management club The Route bring home an average of £573,000 a year – compared to the national average of £50,649. ...
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Tax tribunal case hike
A sharp rise in the number of cases put before the two HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) tax tribunals may be a result of applicants pushing appeals through before the tribunals merge, a leading tax lawyer has said. Applications to the VAT and Duties Tribunal and ...
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Report calls for data transparency
A fast-track procedure for removing barriers to the sharing of personal data between organisations is among legal reforms urged in a wide-ranging review on data protection commissioned by the Prime Minister. The review, by Information Commissioner Richard Thomas and Dr Mark Walport, director of the ...
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Call for witness recall education
Leading scientific experts have called for the legal profession to become better informed about how memory works and suggested judges should direct juries on how they should treat recall evidence. The report of an international working group, published last week by the British Psychological Society, ...
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Compensation blow for justice victims
Many victims of miscarriages of justice are now in the ‘appalling situation’ of having no recourse to compensation following a Court of Appeal ruling last week, lawyers have claimed. The court refused to reinstate the discretionary compensation scheme that the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke abolished ...
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Destroying the knowledge base
The decline in the number of experienced duty solicitors is cause for great concern, despite what the LSC says Derek Hill, director of the Criminal Defence Service at the Legal Services Commission (LSC), puts ...
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News
Flexible working in the balance?
‘Work-life balance’ is a modish term born of a soft economy. When money and jobs are relatively easy to come by, professionals look for the additional benefits that will persuade them not to seek a cushier number elsewhere. Too cynical? Almost certainly. Yet we wonder ...
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ASBO appeal
I am studying the readability of anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs), and my initial analysis suggests they may not always be well understood by those to whom they apply. My next step is to find out how well lawyers believe recipients understand ASBOs and how far they have to explain them ...
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SFO in drugs appeal
The Serious Fraud Office’s reputation for legal competence is under scrutiny following the latest setback to a high-profile prosecution. A Crown Court judge last week refused to let the office amend an indictment on criminal offences relating to contested allegations of anti-competitive behaviour over the ...
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Pre-nuptial agreements
Advising your clients about pre-nups is essential. Forget the McCartneys. The most important recent ancillary relief decision is Crossley v Crossley[2007] EWCA Civ 1491, [2007] All ER(D) 396 (Dec), not so much for showing how courts will deal with cases on similar facts, but for implicitly ...
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Court out again
‘Court calamities’ (see [2008] Gazette, 10 July, 13) – plus ça change... About six years ago, a recently retired Circuit Judge included the following in his judgment on an application for committal:
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Called to account
I read with despair that the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), despite yet another consultation, has backed controversial proposals to allow non-solicitors to sign client account withdrawals without any Solicitors Accounts Rules (SAR) training (see [2008] Gazette, 3 July, 4). As an organisation, we responded to the consultation, strongly opposing the ...
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News
Indemnity insurer to abandon PII market
Novae, one of the qualifying lawyers’ professional indemnity insurers (PII), is to pull out of the market completely, the Gazette has learned. According to sources, the insurer, which writes around £2m of PII, will shortly become the second company to withdraw cover from the market ahead ...
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News
MDPs lure 75% of counsel
The vast majority of corporate general counsel will purchase legal services from non-specialist firms once the Legal Services Act reforms are in place, a new study has revealed. Three-quarters of respondents to a survey by business advisory firm KPMG – seen exclusively by the Gazette this ...
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News
AXA kicks off £60m ‘son of TAG’ litigation
Insurance giant AXA has begun legal proceedings against 78 law firms in an attempt to recover losses associated with after-the-event (ATE) insurance policies taken out on claims it believes were not properly vetted, the Gazette has learned. According to sources close to the parties involved, AXA ...
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News
Showing the way
Our changes to guidance on the transfer system safeguard the public interest while minimising any adverse consequences An area of our work that has attracted considerable interest is the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) recent decision to improve the arrangements which allow lawyers qualified in a number ...
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Sole practitioners
Yet more news of fast lady lawyers – and Obiter believes the fastest lady lawyer in the land may finally have been chased down.
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State of the nation
Just after the poor darlings at Queen Mary College, University of London got their degree marks, the results of something far more important came up – those of the first Field Fisher Waterhouse Essay competition for the QM law students who help out at the university’s London Legal Advice Centre. ...