Law Society Gazette, 2 October 2003

Lawyers anxiously await fixed costs road traffic scheme

Personal injury solicitors are on tenterhooks over how the controversial fixed costs scheme for lower-value road traffic accident claims will work in practice when it comes into play next week – amid warnings that they should be urgently reviewing the agreements they have with clients to reflect the changes.

29 September 1993

Video links fail to excite lawyers

Video conference links between remand prisoners and their lawyers are doomed to failure unless more solicitors and barristers participate in a pilot scheme currently running at three prisons around the country. Take-up of the new technology has been so low that the Lord Chancellor’s Department and Home Office officials may have too little feedback to make an educated evaluation of the system’s viability.

28 September 1983

Amending the Race Relations Act

by Geoffrey Bindman

The failure of the 1976 act to make any serious inroads on discrimination is demonstrated by contrasting the minimal impact of the law with the evidence of widespread discrimination throughout the country. The number of cases alleging employment discrimination which have been brought in industrial tribunals is tiny: only 200 cases were heard in 1982.

September 1943

Applicants for admission

Howard, Eric Leigh (formerly Erich Fritz Loesser), 41 Arthur Street, Queensway, W2.

September 1933

Legal decisions affecting solicitors

In re A Debtor, Chancery Division

This appeal from the Brentford County Court raised a question of the right of a solicitor to recover his costs in a bankruptcy matter in a county court because he had not signed the roll of solicitors in that court. Before the Registrar, the debtor took the general objection to all the items of [a] bill on the ground that the petitioning creditor’s solicitor had not signed the roll of solicitors, and was therefore not qualified to practise in that court of claim any costs of so practising.

Mr Justice Clauson said the survey of relevant statutes led to the conclusion that a properly admitted solicitor of the Supreme Court had a statutory right to practise in the county court in its bankruptcy jurisdiction without any further qualification.