Last 3 months headlines – Page 1177
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What a way to make a living
Estella Brown of Middlesex firm Goodwins family law has obviously been working 9 to 5 on the potential for appropriate legal mergers. How about the Law Offices of Kevin J. Dolley LLC in St Louis, US, with Jackson Parton Solicitors from London, to make Dolley Parton? Any more marriages made ...
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The Tyco-Eversheds deal – from whiteboard to renewal
News broke late last week that Tyco is extending the 2006 deal it signed with Eversheds, whereby the firm provides the company’s legal needs for a fixed price – in return for sole-provider status for huge swathes of Tyco’s external legal needs.
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Saatchi promises safeguards in negligence immunity bill
Advertising magnate Lord Saatchi will today outline how he intends to protect doctors from negligence claims if they innovate in the treatment of cancer patients. In a speech to the Royal Society of Medicine, Saatchi will explain how doctors can be encouraged to innovate without being ...
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Tiny misunderstanding
Just when you think the legal profession has finally got its collective head around this internet thingie, there comes a knock-back. A colleague called the Gazette newsdesk the other day to grumble about alleged bias in the selection of readers’ comments for printing on our weekly Feedback pages. ...
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Grayling’s prison clampdown is a smokescreen, says association chair
Reforms to prison privileges announced by the justice secretary today have been condemned as ‘cheap shots’ to ‘whip up prejudice’ and create a ‘smokescreen’ to detract from legal aid cuts. The chair of the Association of Prison Lawyers, Andrew Sperling, questioned why Chris Grayling had decided ...
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Lord Judge and eternal vigilance
When you are lord chief justice a spot of self-deprecation tends to go unnoticed. After all, you’ve reached the top of the tree, have an unimpeachable track record and everybody hangs on your every word. Nobody’s going to take seriously your claim that you have made the most stupid observation ...
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The case for the defence
Law-makers have been thinking about abolishing the marital coercion defence since the early 1920s, so suggestions that it will be abolished in some imminent legislation cannot be said to be a knee-jerk reaction to the Vicky Pryce case.
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Small-claims threshold decision in autumn, Grant says
A government decision on the limit of the size of claims handled by the small-claims court will not be made until the autumn, justice minister Helen Grant revealed today. Grant (pictured) said the Ministry of Justice’s response to a public consultation, which closed in March, is ...
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Massive rise in cross-border family disputes
The number of cross-border family legal disputes referred to a UK judge has grown tenfold in a decade and more than doubled in the past two years, according to an organisation set up to facilitate transnational judicial collaboration. The annual report of the Office of the ...
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Society endorses ‘a la carte’ advice – but warns of risks
Family lawyers offering ‘pay as you go’ legal services are warned of the risks they carry and how to avoid them in a practice note published today by the Law Society. The note has been published to assist solicitors seeking to offer a more affordable service ...
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Society urges super-regulator to delay advocacy scheme
The Law Society’s chief executive has urged super-regulator the Legal Services Board to delay implementation of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA), in recognition of the ‘profound shifts and uncertainties’ afflicting criminal practitioners. Within a year the scheme may be ‘meaningless’ to many firms ...
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Stobart to bid for new legal aid contracts
Stobart Group is likely to bid for a contract if the government goes ahead with plans for price-competitive tendering for criminal legal aid, the business confirmed today. Trevor Howarth, group legal director for Stobart Barristers, said the fixed-fee service had been created with changes to ...
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Private equity spurns law firm advances
Law firms will continue to be unattractive to private equity investors until they improve how they present their financial situation and partners invest their own cash, leading investors said yesterday. John Llewellyn-Lloyd, head of professional services at investment bank Espirito Santo, said external investment was the ...
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Two-year consultation bears fruit with updated property forms
The Law Society has produced long-awaited updated property forms designed to make buying and selling homes easier. Following a consultation process that began two years ago, the Property Information Form (TA6) and Fitting and Contents Form (TA10) have been revised. The new ...
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SRA chief Antony Townsend to step down
Antony Townsend, chief executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority since its inception, is to step down later this year. In a statement this afternoon, Townsend (pictured) described the pace of change at the regulator as ‘relentless’ and the challenges he has faced as ‘formidable’. ...
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Criminal legal aid reforms ‘potentially unlawful’ - Society
The Law Society has called for a complete rethink of the government’s ‘economically unworkable’ and ‘potentially unlawful’ criminal legal aid proposals. In a policy document published online yesterday, the Society said: ‘No amount of tinkering with the system of procurement will solve that fundamental difficulty’ with ...
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Do single joint experts work?
The main rationale for using a single joint expert (SJE) is to reduce the costs and delays associated with using expert witnesses on behalf of each of the parties in litigation. This has been in place for a number of years, but experience of SJE appointments confirms that new issues ...
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Our only certainty is uncertainty
Sado-masochism, that's the only possible answer. How else do you explain why so many solicitors line up for conferences about the future of the legal profession, like lobsters clambering to the front of the tank for a better view of the cooking instructions? I speak as ...
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Wig or the wok?
Congratulations to employment solicitor Larkin Cen, who made it through to last night’s final of MasterChef, despite a kitchen calamity in a previous episode in which his souffle crashed to the floor. Cen has been a solicitor for three years at Morgan Cole in Bristol. ...
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UKIP’s law and justice policy
What is most notable about UKIP’s 2013 local ‘manifesto’ is not its brevity, but its banality. We know about the dog-whistle scapegoating of ‘immigrants’ and ‘travellers’. What else is there? UKIP believes council tax should go down, tax generally should be ‘as low as possible’ (zero, ...