Last 3 months headlines – Page 1152
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Family judges backing court welfare reports
Family judges follow the recommendation of court welfare reports in nine out of 10 cases, research has revealed. A study commissioned by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) shows that the reports of family court advisers were accepted in just over ...
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Colombian lawyers still under threat
The Caravana international delegation of lawyers was ‘dismayed’ to learn that assassinations of Colombian judges and lawyers have increased since its last visit to the country two years ago, the Gazette can reveal.
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Land Registry shock at digital difficulty
Electronic conveyancing remains on the agenda of the Land Registry despite proving ‘more difficult to realise than anyone had thought’, the chief land registrar said this week. Speaking at the Westminster Legal Policy Forum on conveyancing, Malcolm Dawson outlined the Land Registry’s vision to be ...
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Law firm websites ‘trail other sectors’
City firm Berwin Leighton Paisner and international firm DLA Piper have scored the highest in a survey of legal websites – which the authors say reveals that law firms have much to learn from other sectors. Of 30 law firms surveyed by Last Exit, a digital ...
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Hopes and fears for 2013
There are dire predictions for parts of the legal profession in 2013. The provision of social welfare law will be hit by the full force of the legal aid cuts from April. This is also the date from which the economics of civil claims are ...
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Judicial review changes could be harmful
by Jason Towell, a partner at Cripps Harries Hall In a recent speech to the CBI the prime minister stated that the government would be looking at ways to streamline the judicial review process.
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Breach of confidence
Media – Confidential information Abbey v Gilligan and another: Queen's Bench Division: 20 November 2012 The claimant had brought a claim for breach of confidence or, alternatively, misuse of private ...
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Pre-Christmas rush
I love this time of year: the decorations, the lights, so much to do, everyone else making money, clients. In fact everyone wants everything to be done before Christmas. How I miss those seasonal contact/access applications. At least the pre-Christmas rush of people queuing outside shops to do their shoplifting ...
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Grayling sets out plan for culling judicial reviews
The justice secretary has set out plans to cut the number of ‘weak or ill-founded’ judicial reviews, which he claims are blocking the system and wasting money. A consultation published today suggests: - Reducing the time limits for bringing planning and procurement ...
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Prisoner voting debate no excuse for leaving Euro convention
Sometimes you just have to rant. I have spent near a lifetime teaching staff ‘to do lofty’, to conduct debate only in moderate tones. Then you encounter something like politicians posturing on prisoner voting. And the dam breaks. This is not only humbug: it is dangerous humbug.
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60 years and counting
David Duke-Cohan was admitted to the profession in October 1952, the month that Britain tested its first atomic bomb, the newly formed nation of Pakistan played its first cricket Test match and Birds Eye sold its first frozen peas. Duke-Cohan, now 84, is still practising – ...
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Photographic evidence
The term ‘conversational distance’ is often used in personal injury and clinical negligence claims to describe the measurability of the prominance of a scar or deformity. It is deemed suitable for this purpose, yet in medico-legal photography it has no meaning.
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Labour takes aim at whiplash reform plan
The government’s whiplash reforms are an attack on access to justice, the legal profession and genuine victims, according to shadow justice minister Andy Slaughter. Slaughter (pictured) accused the government, which unveiled its proposals on Tuesday, of ignoring root causes of problems with personal injury claims, such ...
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Justice secretary out of order
Press headlines about fat-cat lawyers minting it from legal aid are a bad sign for some solicitors and their clients – they tend to herald further assaults by the government on access to justice. The Sunday Telegraph and the Sun both ran stories at the weekend ...
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Small claims limit raised to £5,000 in Grayling whiplash plan
Justice secretary Chris Grayling will today unveil his long-expected blueprint for bringing down the number of whiplash claims. In a four-month consultation to be launched this morning, Grayling (pictured) will outline proposals for independent medical panels to diagnose whiplash injuries and raise the small-claims track threshold ...
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Ombudsman warns of dangers from ‘conveyancing factories’
‘Conveyancing factories’ pose a potential risk for housebuyers, the chief ombudsman warns today, saying he is braced for more complaints about services. A report, ‘Losing the Plot – residential conveyancing complaints and their causes’, says that despite the fall in house sales, residential conveyancing accounted for ...
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PC renewals – one-third of the roll still to apply
Almost a third of the expected applications for practising certificate renewal have yet to be started with just four working days until the deadline. Despite repeated pleas from the Solicitors Regulation Authority for early applications, 31% of last year’s PC holders had yet to even start ...
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Will post-Jackson clients need protection from lawyers?
The government is now well on its way towards introducing damages-based agreements, which will be served up to litigants from a new menu of funding options next April. It issued a draft version of its DBA regulations nearly two months ago, and after inviting comments during ...
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Unmeritorious appeals ‘clogging the arteries’ of CoA
Increasing numbers of ‘unmeritorious’ appeals could have the effect of ‘clogging the arteries’ of the court of appeal, the registrar of criminal appeals has warned. In the court’s annual review published today, Master Egan QC says that with pressure on funding and as the number of ...