Last 3 months headlines – Page 1121
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Planning for tax-year end
The government has announced that it will be reducing the top rate of tax from 50% to 45% for those on incomes over £150,000. This change, along with forthcoming changes to pensions contribution reliefs, means that you should review the reliefs on offer to make sure you’re minimising your tax ...
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Secret hearings in civil courts to be introduced in weeks
Secretive closed material procedure (CMP) hearings are to be extended into the country’s main civil courts following the House of Lords’ narrow rejection of an amendment to the controversial Justice and Security Bill. Peers yesterday voted by 174 to 158 to reject a Labour amendment to ...
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Jackson – an overview
The Jackson reforms, due to take effect 1 April, have met with some controversy and even a degree of bad press. The details are complex; the ultimate effects unclear. The precise wording of some of the measures only became visible when laid before parliament at the end of January, and ...
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Clegg urges lawyers to help employee ownership drive
The deputy prime minister today called on the legal profession to gain an understanding of employee ownership of businesses to help clients set up John-Lewis style enterprises. Delivering the first Robert Oakeshott Memorial Lecture at the Law Society this morning, Clegg backed a target ...
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SFO doubling Libor investigation team
‘Significant developments’ in the Libor investigation are expected over the next few months, the director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) indicated last night. Addressing the inaugural meeting of the Fraud Lawyers Association (FLA), David Green (pictured) said the SFO is doubling the team working on ...
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Society intervenes in Nepal 'anti-Maoist' human rights case
The Law Society has intervened in the case of a Nepalese human rights lawyer facing prosecution as an ‘anti-Maoist dollar mongerer’. The Society has called on Nepal’s prime minister Khil Raj Regmi to protect lawyer Mandira Sharma from threats of death and violence. ...
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‘Whitehall farce’ border agency to be abolished
The Law Society’s immigration law committee has cautiously welcomed the announcement that the UK Border Agency (UKBA) is to be abolished and brought back within the Home Office under the direct control of ministers. In an unscheduled House of Commons statement yesterday, home secretary Theresa ...
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Appeal judge makes blistering attack on ‘emasculating’ legal aid cuts
A retired judge has used one of his final cases to launch an attack on the government’s ‘emasculation’ of legal aid. Sir Alan Ward said judges of all levels were facing increasing difficulties with litigants in person – a problem which will only get worse when ...
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Troubled Ashton Fox bought by Antony Hodari in pre-pack deal
North-west personal injury firm Antony Hodari has announced the acquisition of Preston firm Ashton Fox in a pre-pack deal. Ashton Fox went in to administration last month. The deal, for an undisclosed amount, includes all work in progress, totaling around 8,000 cases, predominantly on mortgage ...
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This judgment is sponsored by Budweiser
There are always two clues for the eagle-eyed journalist that an announcement is going to cause trouble. The first is the announcement itself: the less detail, the more controversial it’s likely to turn out. It’s like the Titanic captain telling passengers the ship is suffering a ...
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Society wins more flexibility for Santander panel firms
Conveyancing firms will continue to be able to act on behalf of Santander while their Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) applications are being considered, the Law Society has announced, following negotiations with the bank. Last year the bank changed the terms of its residential conveyancing panel to ...
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Judge criticises ‘desultory’ training in run-up to 1 April
A senior member of the judiciary has become the first judge to criticise in public the level of training given ahead of the Jackson reforms coming into force. Senior master Steven Whitaker (pictured), who is also the Queen’s remembrancer at the Royal Courts of Justice, said ...
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LSB throws gates open to bar public access
The Legal Services Board today approved rule changes that will allow barristers to deal directly with clients in areas eligible for legal aid and for barristers of under three years’ call to be directly accessible to clients. The Bar Standards Board (BSB) said it is strengthening ...
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If you’re happy and you know it…
With Jackson Day almost upon us and the legal world on the brink of armageddon, it’s nice to know we’re all staying positive. How else to explain the results of a survey that arrived on Obiter’s desk today saying that lawyers are among the happiest workers in the UK. ...
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Police services
Police attendance at football matches – Defendant police force providing police services in certain identified streets and public areas beyond stadium and areas owned and controlled by claimant football club (the extended footprint) Leeds United Football Club v Chief ...
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Changes to criminal law – part 2
On 1 September 2012 it became an offence under section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) for a person to trespass in a residential building by living or intending to live in the building when he knew or ought to have known that ...
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A better approach to diversity
Larissa Hutson (4 March) states that one of the statutory responsibilities of the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) is ‘to reach and encourage a wide range of applicants to properly reflect the full diversity of the profession’. The fact that the judiciary does not properly reflect the diversity of the legal ...
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Judicial appointments: random access
I am responding to a letter (Larissa Hutson, 4 March) concerning research being carried out to discover what attracts members of the legal profession to apply – or puts them off from applying – to be a judge. This work is being undertaken by the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) in ...
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Two decades of greed
Amid all the doom and gloom of Jackson et al, perhaps the best thing that has happened to our profession in recent years is the government’s collaboration with the insurance industry orchestrating the complete collapse of the personal injury sector. With headlines suggesting ‘shock’, and announcing redundancies and closures of ...
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Identity check conundrum
Do the Land Registry rules regarding confirmation of identity spell the end for selling property under a power of attorney? According to Practice Guide 67 and rule 17 of the Land Registration Rules 2003, the chief land registrar is entitled to require evidence of identity of ...