Last 3 months headlines – Page 1105
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Grayling’s JR reforms met with widespread opposition
Judicial review is a way of making sure that public officials, including ministers, keep within the law. So there must be cause for concern when we hear a minister announce reforms to judicial review that will ‘target the weak, frivolous and unmeritorious cases which congest the courts and cause delay’ ...
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Women trailing at magic circle elite
The magic circle’s commitment to diversity will again be called into question after the proportion of women making partner in 2013 fell below 20%. The quintet of UK-based firms appointed just 13 women worldwide out of a total of 73. In last year’s round, ...
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Most criminal firms to snub PCT contracts
Only two of the 25 top-earning criminal legal aid firms will bid for a contract if the government’s current scheme for price-competitive tendering (PCT) is introduced – and more than half would support a boycott, a poll by the Gazette can exclusively reveal. The Gazette this ...
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Gateway aims to help vulnerable
Sexual offending against children by Jimmy Savile has focused attention on how the criminal justice system treats young and vulnerable complainants and witnesses, attorney general Dominic Grieve QC said last week. However, Grieve rejected the idea of dispensing with the adversarial system for cases involving ...
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Lawyers need to ‘network widely’
Corporate counsel who cannot show ‘cultural awareness and affinity’ will fall behind in the competition for senior in-house roles, a leading headhunter has warned. Nicholas Hedley of search consultancy Hedley May told the Law Society’s third annual in-house conference that ‘it is not enough to ...
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HJA rejects Magdalene ‘cash cow’ slurs
A claimant firm that advertised for victims of the Magdalene laundries has rejected accusations it is using the notorious Irish scandal as a ‘cash cow’ for lawyers. London firm Hodge Jones & Allen was criticised in the Irish media after it placed advertisements asking for women ...
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Pre-emption rebuke from Lords
Peers have warned the government to stop relying on a 1945 memorandum to give legal justification for acting in ways that pre-empt parliament. In a report critical of the current government’s behaviour, the House of Lords Constitution Committee says the so-called ‘Ram doctrine’ is ‘misleading ...
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Progress on gender equality remains glacial
Helen Grant MP is minister both for justice, and women and equalities. Who better then to have a word with the magic circle about their latest partner round. As we report today, only 13 of 73 appointments are women, less than 20%, an even smaller proportion than last time. Even ...
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PCT plans risk creating a system of state-sponsored miscarriages of justice
by Rt Hon Sadiq Khan MP, shadow lord chancellor and justice secretary In these straitened economic times, savings must be found across the whole criminal justice system. But with the dust barely settled on the advice deserts created by the government’s brutal cuts to civil legal ...
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Jackson reforms: part two
The new funding arrangements from April fundamentally change the civil litigation landscape. Only some of these result from the Jackson costs report. Lord Justice Jackson did not recommend the serious cutbacks in legal aid enacted in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012 and S.I. 2013 ...
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NewsMy legal life: Sarah Webb
My uncle, a Swansea solicitor, gave me my first job in the law as his secretary. I did law as a non-graduate with long articles, starting off doing criminal work in Shepherds Bush.
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‘Back to basics’ in Brum
The new president of Birmingham Law Society, Allsopp & Co partner Martin Allsopp, does not have a computer on his desk because, he says, he wants the profession to ‘go back to basics’ and talk to clients ‘one-to-one’ again. In a nutshell, that is his ...
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The dilemma of small claims
The struggle over the financial limits for small claims is an issue which is traditionally difficult for lawyer policymakers, because of the apparent conflict between public and private interests. The raising of personal injury claim levels in the UK has caused a fuss, and now the topic has appeared on ...
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Contempt of court
Committal – Breach of injunction – Claimants publishing photographs on Facebook and Twitter in breach of injunction Attorney general v Harkins; Attorney general v Liddle: Queen's Bench Division: 26 April 2013 ...
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Referral guidance
by Sukhbir Bassra and Amarveer Bassra The referral ban is now in force and there are hundreds of firms of solicitors looking for a way forward.
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Acquisitive Quindell posts big jump in profits
The stock-exchange listed company that has acquired a clutch of personal injury firms over the past year today posted a nine-fold rise in profits. Quindell Portfolio, which runs ‘end-to-end’ processes in several business sectors reported pre-tax profits of £41.2m on a turnover of £171.9m in ...
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‘Going to court was worse than the abuse’
‘You can’t be certain that you think that it wasn’t possible that you filled in the first side of the form?’ If you struggled for a moment with that question, imagine how it must have felt for a defendant with learning difficulties who was asked it ...
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Insurance defendant firms to merge
Two national firms are merging to create a £90m defendant insurance litigation business with more than 1,200 staff. Dispute resolution firm Greenwoods is to join insurance firm Plexus Law under the umbrella of the £150m Parabis Law group. The two firms have already signed heads of ...
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Mills seeks apprentice boon
Obiter’s chums on the Gazette newsdesk were surprised last month when Alex Mills, founder and director of ‘exciting legal franchise brand’ Dynamo Legal, declined the offer of an interview. Such bashfulness from the promoter of a new commercial offering is unusual, especially on launch day. ...