The Law Society’s Gazette, 20 February 2003Fixed fees fights

Solicitors could find themselves embroiled in a new wave of hostility and test litigation over costs if there is no progress on extending fixed fees to post-issue. The warning comes as the government begins work on introducing the deal reached in December at the high-powered Civil Justice Council costs forum for pre-issue fixed fees in low-value road traffic accident cases.

16 February 1983 Postbox: As person to person

How depressing to find that in their review of The Penguin Guide to the Law the Wandsworth Legal Resource Project twice use that lamentable word ‘layperson’. One wonders, with a wild surmise, where this nonsense is to end. Will the usual translation of Schiller’s famous line ‘All mankind shall be as brothers’ give way to ‘All personkind shall be as…’ – well, as what?

Using a BBC Microcomputer in the office

I purchased a BBC Micro last year as a complete novice but have managed to develop a somewhat sophisticated program based on the Law Society’s booklet The Expense of Time. Using the program for the first time recently reduced what previously had involved many hours of calculations to approximately 15 minutes’ use of the computer.

14 February 1973 Advertising legal aid: National campaign

The extension of the legal aid scheme on the implementation of the Legal Advice and Assistance Act 1972 provides a most appropriate moment for a publicity drive of unprecedented proportions. Here is an opportunity to establish that the solicitor is accessible, that his services are not confined to the privileged but available to the community as a whole. There could hardly be a more favourable opportunity for correcting the distorted ‘image’ with which our profession has so many years been lumbered.

Postbox: get on with the job and stop carping

I am becoming increasingly irritated by the carping and ill-informed criticisms of the Council which appears in ‘Postbox’. A profession as large as ours is bound to include a handful of voluble dissidents, but the sheer volume of criticism must, I think, stem from lack of information and consequent frustration.