Gazette 9 September 2010

Cuts loom for Whitehall lawyers

The 2,000-strong Government Legal Service is facing job cuts of 20% to 40% as government savings targets translate directly into headcount reductions, the Gazette has learned. Senior posts will be among the first to disappear.

Lawyer arrested in Iran

The Iranian authorities have arrested human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh for ‘acting against national security’ and have charged human rights activist Shiva Nazar Ahari with the capital offence of ‘waging war against God’.

7 September 2000

Stipendiaries become judges

Provincial and metropolitan stipendiary magistrates – who are mostly solicitors – are to serve on a unified stipendiary magistrates’ bench and be renamed ‘District Judges (magistrates courts)’ under reforms announced last week. The lord chancellor, Lord Irvine, said the newly unified bench would improve the efficiency of magistrates’ courts.

5 September 1990

President warns against impeding audience rights

Any attempts to frustrate the clear intention of the Courts and Legal Services Bill to allow solicitors audience rights in the higher courts will rebound with the opposite effect, the Law Society’s president predicted this week. Mr Holland believes that parliament would not hesitate to impose its will forcefully if it detected sly attempts to place obstacles in the way of solicitors becoming advocates in the higher courts.

September 1960

Solicitors at the Central Criminal Court

The difficulties of getting into the dock at the Central Criminal Court are, no doubt, a matter of which only solicitors would complain. The London (Criminal Courts) Solicitors’ Association has on two occasions discussed this matter with the Central Criminal Court and, although they showed considerable willingness, it was found impossible to devise a scheme which would meet both the convenience of solicitors and the requirements of security.

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