The Law Society Gazette

10 September 2009

Court motif costs taxpayer £350k

The Treasury’s coffers may presently echo to the ghostly rustle of rolling tumbleweed, but no expense has been spared for Britain’s new Supreme Court. Taxpayers have paid nearly £50,000 for the design of not one but two emblems for the institution. The Ministry of Justice declined to reveal the amount paid to Sir Peter Blake for designing the court’s carpet, which features repeated images of the motif, citing commercial confidentiality.

6 September 1989

Practice management shake-up urged for survival

The high street solicitor’s back is against the wall, even if this harsh fact has not sunk in yet. Pressures from all sides – from an ever more sophisticated client, new competitors, a new, highly cost and efficiency conscious, legal aid administration and from courts anxious to trim their lists – are bearing down bit by bit. The effects could be devastating, even for those who now feel they are managing just fine thank you.

September 1964

A rude cacophany

Not the least of the problems associated with the recent vast increase in the number of those sitting the Qualifying Examination has been obtaining suitable examination rooms. One of the traditional centres – Queen’s Square – was made famous as ‘the quietest spot in London’ in a report published in The Observer in May 1959.

Very different, apparently, in terms of decibels, was the experience of those candidates for the August Part 1 Examination who were drafted to Holborn Assembly Hall for their ordeal. A number of them have written – as one of them put it – to register the strongest protest against the appalling conditions there. His thoughts ‘were constantly attacked by a rude cacophony of lorries backing and shunting, electric drills and saws, singing and shouting from a nearby engineering works’.

September 1939

National emergency

The Council of the Law Society have prepared a skeleton form of agreement for use in a simple case by a solicitor in private practice, who would be engaged whole time on National Service in the event of an outbreak of hostilities, and another solicitor willing to conduct the practice of the former solicitor during his absence. The form of agreement is intended merely as a guide and should be adapted to meet the circumstances in each specific case.

 

 

Topics