All articles by Jonathan Goldsmith – Page 31
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Justice is never reached, only sought
In a week when a new Pope was elected and scientists at Cern in Switzerland grew more certain that the so-called ‘God particle’ or Higgs boson exists, I fell to thinking about the values of our own profession, and where it stands in the spectrum between the two framework terms ...
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Would you earn more in France?
The Law Society’s Research Unit is in the process of publishing multi-part assessments of the legal services market. The reports often confirm what we already know – for instance, that there are two solicitors’ professions, and aren’t the City types doing well, while those poor devils in the small and ...
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Spotlight on the European courts
It’s time to look again at the European courts in Luxembourg. I shall start with the particular, two recent and interesting cases affecting lawyers, and move to the general, the courts’ record in relation to efficiency and the appointment of judges.
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Coping with the global
Solicitors have been one of the beneficiaries and promoters of globalisation in legal services. It is not a success that could reasonably have been predicted back in the 1960s. I suppose that its causes lie in multiple factors, including: the removal of the cap on the number of partners in ...
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Europe versus the internet monsters
Although we are distracted by daily news of crime (for instance, Oscar Pistorius) or sex (Jimmy Savile and others), we all know that there are more important developments changing our world. An example is the way the huge internet barons – Amazon, Google, Facebook – are altering our physical and ...
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Lawyer training – a rising EU profile
Last week, I wrote about how EU funding has helped lawyers, through the creation of a Find-A-Lawyer database (some welcomed the money, others saw it is a waste). I should have called it EU funding - part 1. This week comes part 2, which tells how EU funding is supporting ...
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EU-US deal stirs lawyers’ primal instincts
In his recent state of the union address, president Obama said: ‘And tonight, I’m announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive transatlantic trade and investment partnership with the UK, because trade that is fair and free across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs.’ Except that he ...
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Find-A-Lawyer, EU-style
The European budget discussions which ended just over a week ago might have left you puzzled as to whether EU funds impact lawyers. Do you benefit, and if so how? Here is a little insight into how a tiny part of the cash has been used to help the legal ...
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Lawyers and the new money laundering directive
Well, at least one of my predictions from last week for 2013 has come true: the draft of the fourth money laundering directive was published a few days ago, as reported by the Gazette last
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States’ rights or EU rights in 2013?
I have been reading Robert A. Caro’s masterpiece on the life of US president Lyndon Johnson, which I cannot recommend enough. It is not short (four gigantic volumes so far), but is compulsive and brilliant. The relevance of this to EU legal affairs is in its exposure of how the ...
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Rational debate needed over EU crime laws
So the big Cameron speech on Europe has come and gone. He devoted precisely 12 words in it to the most pressing EU issue which will arise before his beloved referendum even takes place: that of the opportunity for opt-out by the UK government from the EU crime and policing ...
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Lobbying by lawyers – a prickly path
I often avoid writing about sensitive topics, out of cowardice. One of these has been the hyper-sensitive subject of governmental lobbying by lawyers, which is of interest both in the UK and in the EU.
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Pull up your socks, Johnny Foreigner
One of the main themes of David Cameron’s recent speech seemed to be deep regret that the EU was just not good enough for the UK. If only it were, he would be delighted to recommend staying. And so he gave poor Johnny Foreigner an ultimatum to pull up his ...
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All eyes on the Irish
Another six months has elapsed, and so another presidency of the EU Council of Ministers begins. For the next half-year, the Irish government is in charge, the seventh time that they have led in the past 40 years. The budget for their presidency is, not surprisingly, less than when they ...
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Horse-riding lessons for lawyers
In the last few weeks, two things have happened simultaneously. First, the government has said that it wishes to continue with the statutory underpinning of rather close supervision of the legal profession. Second, the government has said that it does not wish to begin the statutory underpinning of close – ...
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An alternative honours list
From a European and a lawyer’s point of view, there were some surprises when reading the latest new year’s honours list. I have therefore decided to suggest alternative nominees.
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Strasbourg Christmas surprises
Here is the first pantomime of the season. The scene opens in Strasbourg, where giants live: the European Court of Human Rights, and the Council of Europe, among others. Baron Hard-Up (otherwise known as the French government) owns their forest habitat, and has made it as difficult as possible to ...
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A professional lesson from Belarus
There is a country in Europe, bordered by three member states of the EU (Latvia, Lithuania and Poland), where lawyers suffer grievously for carrying out their professional duties - Belarus, often called Europe’s last dictatorship.
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Lawyers’ core principles are under threat
It has been fashionable to speak about the future of lawyers in terms of commoditisation, standardisation and technology (yes, I am speaking about you, Richard Susskind). Those factors will clearly have their impact – even though to date, far from there being fewer lawyers as predicted, there are more and ...
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An economic message for our regulators
Here are some statistics which may surprise you (apart from the first sentence): Based on 2010 estimates, the UK had the largest share of the European legal services market followed closely by Germany. In total the UK and German legal services markets accounted for just under ...