All articles by Rachel Rothwell – Page 17
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LSB must go now, says Bar Council chief
The barristers’ profession cranked up its pressure on the Legal Services Board this weekend as the chair of the Bar Council called for the super-regulator to be ‘disbanded'. Michael Todd QC told the bar's annual conference that the LSB was going ‘beyond its brief’, and criticised ...
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Civil litigators could consider advocacy
by Rachel Rothwell, editor of Litigation Funding magazine I recently attended a conference held by the Law Society’s Civil Justice Section – Litigators: survive and thrive. One key message was aimed at personal injury lawyers who – with the Jackson timebomb ticking and set for detonation ...
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Litigation funder targets case ‘portfolios’
One of the UK’s biggest litigation funders is in talks with law firms about using alternative business structures to invest in a ‘portfolio’ of their commercial litigation. The move by Harbour Litigation Funding signals what is expected to become a closer relationship between law firms and ...
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Are DBAs a viable option in personal injury?
As personal injury lawyers prepare to kiss goodbye to recoverability of after-the-event insurance premiums and success fees in conditional fee agreements from next April, so they will be waving hello to the new kid in town, the damages-based agreement. Will DBAs prove to be the hero of the hour, rescuing ...
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Policing professionals - international regulators
Last week, the Solicitors Regulation Authority held the first conference of its kind for international regulators.
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SRA goes global
The Solicitors Regulation Authority held the first ever international conference specifically for legal regulators last week, and it was a big success. More than 100 delegates attended, including regulators from the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Ireland and many other jurisdictions.
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Royal snaps expose more than just flesh
The publication of holiday snaps of the Duchess of Cambridge last week – with those images inevitably set to take a virtual tour of the globe thanks to the world wide web – have exposed more than just skin. What has been laid bare has been ...
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Time to get on with portal plans
If you are trying to run a personal injury practice, you may be feeling pretty frustrated right now. You know that the government intends to extend the road traffic accident protocol vertically to higher value cases (up to £25,000) by next April. You know it will also be extended horizontally, ...
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Will litigators be lured by contingency fees?
With the starting gun for contingency fees in commercial litigation due to fire in April 2013, interest in how the new damages-based agreements (DBAs) will work has been building in recent months. Now, with the publication of a set of recommendations from the Civil Justice Council’s DBAs working group, a ...
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Should funders bring collective actions?
As the government closed its consultation on collective actions in competition law cases at the end of last month, there was an outcry from business groups warning against the plans. Among the critics were the CBI, and our old friends the Institute of Legal Reform ...
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Lessons from the low-value RTA process
Last week the Ministry of Justice finally revealed Professor Fenn’s independent report on the operation of the low-value road traffic accident process. And it was rather disappointing. Fenn found that costs under the process, which uses an electronic portal, appeared to be 3-4% lower than previously, ...
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Are GCs prevented from forcing down fees?
I heard a depressing tale last week that will be familiar to many lawyers working in the in-house sector. A general counsel was dealing with a substantial piece of litigation. He had chosen to give the job to a good silver circle firm, and was very ...
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Personal injury costs reform continues apace
Behind-the-scenes work on the implementation of Lord Justice Jackson’s reform of personal injury costs has stepped up a gear or three in the past few weeks. The government intends to make a ministerial statement on qualified one-way costs shifting (QOCS) on 19 July, which has injected some urgency into the ...
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Will funders start bypassing solicitors?
There is quite a buzz about third-party funding at the moment. Media coverage has spread well beyond the legal press, with recent articles on the topic in the FT and now even the Guardian. But much as funders like to suggest every now and ...
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Lawyers wary of cost-shifting plan
Claimants who win their cases could still end up with nothing under the government’s new costs rules for personal injury, lawyers warned this week. Claimant solicitors said the way government plans to implement its qualified one-way costs-shifting (QOCS) rules will ‘undoubtedly’ deter people from making valid ...
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MoJ answers key QOCS questions
The government has answered some of the fundamental questions about how its new system for transferring the costs burden in personal injury cases will work. Under qualified one-way costs shifting, claimants are intended to be protected from defendants’ costs in most circumstances, even when they lose. ...
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Is it wrong to profit from divorce litigation?
There are some intriguing developments in the financing of divorce cases at the moment. Investment in divorce litigation hit the headlines earlier in the year with the high-profile divorce of Michelle Young from her millionaire former husband Scot, described in the press as a 'fixer’ for ...
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Fees on way back down to earth
Speaking at the Association of Costs Lawyers’ annual conference last week, the master of the rolls Lord Neuberger expressed great confidence that a combination of the Jackson reforms, alternative business structures and client demand for fixed fees will mean that lawyer’s fees are almost certain to come down.
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Regulation of will-writers will affect solicitors too
The solicitors’ profession was punching the air in celebration last week when the Legal Services Board announced its intention to finally bring will-writing into the regulatory fold.
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The third degree
In the House of Lords recently, a Liberal Democrat peer pointed out that third-party funding used to be ‘both a crime and a civil tort’. But unusually for a practice that was previously considered illegal, third-party funding is now basking in the warm glow of judicial approval; and while the ...