All articles by Jon Robins
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A way through: the future under LASPO
Necessity is the mother of invention, they say, and lawyers who are intent on surviving the age of austerity need to innovate to survive. The profession is fighting on multiple fronts: a double-dip recession, new competition flowing in from the ongoing programme of liberalisation and savage legal aid cuts heading ...
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How will the legal market adapt if it returns to the pre-recoverability era?
'I was a litigator before becoming an MP. I started in 1978,’ says Andrew Dismore, the former Labour MP who heads the Access to Justice Action Group. ‘Back then, a lot of people didn’t have the opportunity to bring their cases, pure and simple.’ There was the phenomenon known as ...
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Has the time come for a contingency legal aid fund?
The idea of CLAF (or contingency legal aid fund) is either a brilliant notion that has never had its day or an unworkable one that should have been put out of its misery years back. It has been knocking around the legal policy world since ...
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How legal aid sector is challenging assumptions about pro bono work
by Jon Robins, editor of Pro Bono: Good Enough?, part of the ‘justice gap’ series, produced by the legal research company Jures ‘Pro bono work can be like foreign aid projects and cause more harm than good,’ argues one contributor in a new collection of ...
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New legal ombudsman Adam Sampson gives his first interview
Adam Sampson is the first to acknowledge that his new job as legal ombudsman is potentially a poisoned chalice. One of the main catalysts of the Legal Services Act (LSA), which brought his organisation into being, was (as he puts it) ‘the woeful record on complaints-handling [of] the Legal Complaints ...
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The deficiencies of the legal aid payment regime
Jon Robins freelance journalist and editor of Closing the Justice Gap ‘A breathtaking risk’ was the damning assessment of the cross-party constitutional affairs select committee of Lord Carter’s plan to scrap the hourly ...
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For legal aid not to suffer cuts the public needs to care
by Jon Robinsco-author of The Justice Gap and director of the legal research company Jures. You can download Closing the Justice Gap Legal aid is a tiny, albeit vital, backwater of our public services which has critical importance in our democratic society, yet fails to resonate ...
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The controversial business of tracing beneficiaries of unclaimed estates
In May 2009, Trevor Moore, a 61-year-old IT consultant from Hertfordshire, was alerted to the existence of a hitherto unknown cousin by the approach of a one-man-band probate research company that was looking for potential beneficiaries for an unclaimed estate. Trevor was told it ‘probably wasn’t you’, but this unsolicited ...
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Offshore firms stay afloat while governments target tax havens
In the normal course of events, law firms would be falling over themselves to have their headquarters name-checked by the leader of the free world. But not offshore giant Maples and Calder. Its offices at Ugland House on the Cayman Islands were singled out by Barack Obama on his campaign ...
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Phil Shiner: top human rights lawyer shows no sign of slowing down
‘We have the most powerful democracy in the world because our state will use public money through legal aid to pay me to take these cases,’ says Phil Shiner, the human rights lawyer as much abused by some in the media as he is revered by his peers.
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Why legal disciplinary practices are off to a slow start
On the face of it, Nick Hanning, a legal executive from Dorset; Clint Evans, chief executive at City firm Barlow Lyde & Gilbert; and John Durcan, practice director at a large legal aid firm in Yorkshire, have little in common apart from their membership of the extended legal family.
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What impact is the downturn having on Eastern Europe?
As Londoners struggled under a deluge of Siberian snow in February, the City played host to the Russian finance minister, Alexei Kudrin. Michael Pugh, a capital markets partner at Lovells who has been working in the Commonwealth of Independent States region since 1992, flew back from Moscow to the Guildhall ...
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Criminal defence call centres may work, but are they justice?
At 9.37am on the Friday before Christmas, the display screen in the middle of the open-plan office indicates that 287 calls from police stations have so far been answered. It is the job of the Defence Solicitor Call Centre (DSCC) in Purley, Surrey (the DSCC’s other ...
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Group litigation: the coming of class actions?
The recession, with the government’s bail-out of the banks, could provide fertile territory for lawyers that specialise in group litigation.
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Tougher credit rules and anxious clients
‘Cash is king’, the practice management mantra for firms in the downturn, is sadly more honoured in the breach than in the observance. The collapse last month of Key Business Finance (KBF), the specialist solicitors’ lending arm of the failed Icelandic bank Landsbanki, is a case in point.
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Martyn Day: fierce advocate for the people
One could never criticise Martyn Day for lacking the willingness to have a go. ‘I’m absolutely determined to find the right case,’ says the senior partner of claimant firm Leigh Day & Co, when asked if he would be prepared to have another crack at suing tobacco companies on behalf ...
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Home information packs: happy birthday?
‘If ever a government needs a salutary lesson in what happens when you ignore what the stakeholders say, I introduce to you the home information pack,’ reflects Richard Barnett, chairman of the Law Society’s conveyancing and land law committee. There was never going to be much ...
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PI mediation: moving to alternate methods of resolution
Many lawyers still need convincing about the benefits of mediation, but its impact in personal injury cases can be hugely beneficial. ‘I felt like I was beating my head against the door for four years, just getting nowhere. The lawyers were ...
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The case for the defence
As Graham Zellick steps down as chairman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, he tells of his fears that budget cuts could seriously impede the body’s work. ‘I do not think we feature very much on the radar,’ says Professor Graham Zellick, retiring chairman of the ...