The Law Society Gazette, 14 July 2005

Attendance by phone

Some procedural court hearings could be conducted by telephone in a bid to improve efficiency, under plans announced this week by the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA). The DCA is consulting on the rollout of a scheme where court users would phone in rather than appear in person, following successful pilots held at Luton, Bedford and Newcastle county courts.   

10 July 1985

Profession to be asked about advertising

The Annual General Meeting then moved to resolution 3, ‘that this meeting, believing that individual advertising by solicitors is contrary to the interest both of the public and solicitors, calls on the Council of the Law Society to seek the opinion of all solicitors in a postal ballot’.

16 July 1975

The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 came into operation on 1 July 1975. The underlying purpose of the act is to enable those who have paid the penalty imposed by the court and who have afterwards gone straight for the prescribed period of years to be relieved of the burden of their past being brought to light. It has been estimated that over a million people with long past convictions will now no longer be threatened in this way. Their wives and families will also benefit.

July 1965

The Law Commission

On 15 June 1965, the Law Commission Act came into force and, on the following day, the Lord Chancellor announced the names of those he had appointed to serve on a Law Commission under the act. The only solicitor appointed to the commission is one who has so far devoted all his distinguished professional life to the academic fields of research and the teaching of law. The remainder either were or are all members of the bar.

The Body on the Steps

Those of our members who not only have a television set which receives BBC2, but also had the time to look at it on 3 June, must have been somewhat startled to see portrayed upon the screen the dead body of a child lying on, of all places, the front steps of the Law Society’s Hall.  

To those of our members who do find time to watch television, the sight of a corpse is no novelty; that curious children’s programme Dr Who abounds with them: but to find the familiar steps encumbered in this macabre manner must have stretched even their incredulity.

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