All articles by Rachel Rothwell – Page 18
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Third-party funders face tougher rules
The Association of Litigation Funders (ALF) is to bolster measures to protect clients whose litigation is funded by third-party investors. Writing in the February edition of the Gazette’s sister publication Litigation Funding, the ALF’s chair, Leslie Perrin, reveals that the body will introduce tougher rules to ...
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Judges need support over costs budgeting
By Rachel Rothwell, editor of Litigation Funding Now that we are only two months from Jackson D-Day, solicitors are waking up to the prospect of costs budgeting.
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Costs budgeting: why judges need more training
Now that we are only two months from Jackson D-Day, solicitors are waking up to the prospect of costs budgeting. Costs budgeting will require lawyers to think carefully about the likely costs of a trial at an early stage, submit budgets to the court for approval, ...
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Putting it simply: a handbook for LIPs
Last Friday, the judiciary published a special guide for ‘self-represented’ litigants to help them through the judicial process. It was a sign of the times if ever there was.
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A view from the litigant in person
A few weeks ago, I got chatting to a woman in my local pub – let’s call her Susan – who is embroiled in a legal battle in the family courts. Having spent more than £50,000 in legal fees, she is now acting as a litigant in person, and her ...
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Will post-Jackson clients need protection from lawyers?
The government is now well on its way towards introducing damages-based agreements, which will be served up to litigants from a new menu of funding options next April. It issued a draft version of its DBA regulations nearly two months ago, and after inviting comments during ...
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Litigation funding: joining the party
A few years ago, most solicitors would have had no notion of what third-party funding (TPF) was, and even fewer would have cared. But as banks become ever more reluctant to lend to law firms – and civil litigators begin turning their minds to how they will finance contingency fee ...
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Are lawyers an easy target for hackers?
At the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s conference for international legal regulators earlier this autumn, one of the most interesting sessions dealt with the ‘hot topics’ currently bothering regulators across the globe. There was quite a range: bullying within the profession is a big issue in Australia, for ...
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Judges could make ‘ill-informed’ decisions on costs, says Gloster
New costs management rules coming in next April may lead to ‘ill-informed’ decisions on legal costs by judges, a high-profile judge has warned. Mrs Justice Gloster, who was the trial judge in Boris Berezovsky’s failed claim against Roman Abramovich this summer, said that while she had ...
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Jackson ‘will fuel conflicts’
The Jackson reforms will heighten potential conflicts of interest where barristers are dealing directly with the public, experts at the bar conference warned last week. The reforms will alter the rules underpinning conditional fee agreements and introduce damages-based agreements, which will allow lawyers to take a ...
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Bar chief rebuffed over LSB closure
Calls from the bar for the disbanding of the Legal Services Board met with a cool reception from the government this week. Bar Council chair Michael Todd QC told the bar’s annual conference that the super-regulator was going ‘beyond its brief’ and creating ‘burdensome costs’. ...
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Will costs get out of kilter?
At the end of last month, the government announced what many had suspected for a while; that it is not going to introduce a ‘costs council’ of lawyers and other experts that would have been tasked with ensuring that fixed costs, and the guideline hourly rates used by courts in ...
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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, ...