All articles by Jonathan Goldsmith – Page 33
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Should everything in the EU be divisible by 27?
I see it as my role to give the positive side of the European project - of which there is much to say - and to berate the UK press, which abuses the EU thoughtlessly day after day. But I am sorry to report that I shall have to continue ...
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Patents - it’s not over after all
Those of you who are following the twists and turns of the European patent saga should know that the fat lady has not yet sung. The Gazette wisely said in their recent article that the saga ‘appears to have been settled’. But appearances are known to be deceptive, and the ...
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Lawyers' paradise directive
There are around one million lawyers in Europe. If they all lived together in a single country, it would be more populous than three other EU member states (Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta). And of course the country’s name would be Paradise. I understand that the European Commission is ready to ...
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New technology forces legal profession into uncharted territory
Cloud computing is a form of outsourcing. There is legal process outsourcing where, classically, a large law firm sends some legal work to India where it will be undertaken more cheaply. And there is non-legal outsourcing – such as cloud computing – where a back-office function, such as file storage, ...
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Competition and the provision of professional training
Brussels is an echo-chamber, which is a fortunate thing. A piece of news read by just a few people is soon bouncing around from contact to contact, giving it publicity. Just such an event happened this week, and I am further amplifying it by writing about it here. It is ...
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Detainees’ rights – now it is personal
The theme this week is detention and the fundamental rights associated with it: first, the story of a particular man; and then the rights of detained persons in general in the EU.
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Geeks of the world, unite
I am an e-identity geek, pale and closeted in my bedroom, unable to raise my eyes from the screen - I must be, since I write more often about this topic than any other. But the European Union has just published major new legislation, a draft regulation 'on electronic identification ...
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Three questions about the International Bar Association
I am writing this from The Hague in the Netherlands, where I am attending a variety of International Bar Association (IBA) meetings, including one for Bar Leaders. It has led me to reflect on the structure and aims of the IBA, which are not often publicly discussed. I have as ...
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Lawyers must demonstrate sound judgement in turbulent times
History describes circumstances where moral attitudes change. Slavery was accepted as perfectly normal for centuries, indeed a reflection of an ordered universe; today it is considered abhorrent.
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Living in a time of perilous uncertainty
This is a piece about mood and atmosphere: how it feels to live and work in Brussels at a time of feverish speculation about the European Union’s future. It says something of the stability of the last few decades that it is the first occasion in my life that I ...
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Lawyers’ right to strike
As social ties are stretched to breaking point by the economic crisis, an interesting question arises: do lawyers have the right to strike, and if so in what circumstances? The focus here is not on the legal right granted to citizens, including lawyers, by the law of a particular country, ...
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Pecking at lawyers
Displacement activity takes place when animals or humans are faced with a crisis and don’t know how to react. Apparently, birds peck at grass when uncertain whether to attack or flee from an opponent. So it is with governments, too. Confronted by an unprecedented crisis, they haven’t a clue what ...
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Legal aid now underpinned by international principles
There was a welcome development on legal aid this week, from of all places the United Nations. Legal aid is of course something usually dealt with at national level, and there are wide divergences in national treatment and national expenditure.
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From the wild frontiers, where IT meets law
Here are some reports from the expanding frontier of legal practice. As is often the case with technology, they come from the USA.
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Calls for a global legal profession are fanciful
There has been talk in recent years, at conferences or in committee discussions within international legal organisations, about the need for a global legal profession. Harvard Law School has been the latest to climb on the band-wagon with a mid-April conference on the subject.
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An overview of the EU’s week
I try in this blog to describe weekly European news affecting the legal profession. Although I don’t expect sympathy, it can be a head-scratching challenge, since there are not always weekly developments on tap. Policy-makers receive daily updates of EU news, and I scan the headlines ...
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Money laundering again... and again
In the calm of the Easter break, the European commission has published an important report on anti-money laundering, which could eventually have a significant impact on solicitors’ duties. (When reviewing the topics I have written about in these blogs over nearly three years, money laundering is probably the most frequently ...
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Lawyers and the push for growth
We are entering the third phase of responses to the economic crisis. First, there was the effort to put right through new law or regulation what had gone wrong before - not very strongly or accurately, since banks are still paying bonuses and credit rating agencies still doing whatever they ...
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Three golden rules of regulation
I met representatives of the Legal Services Board and the Solicitors Regulation Authority this week. Among many things discussed, I told them the obvious: that the ease of explanation to outsiders of the UK’s regulatory system for the legal profession has not been improved by the Clementi reforms, but made ...
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What do you know about the European Ombudsman?
In a pretty park in the European quarter of Brussels is situated the local base of an institution that should be better known to lawyers, since it can provide recourse to clients. The world may be filling up with ombudsmen, but the granddaddy of them all (in European terms) is ...