Last 3 months headlines – Page 1187
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Help is at hand
Returning after a short period away from the office, I found the inbox filled with invitations to attend courses and join subscription groups offering support to compliance officers for legal practice (COLPs). Timely and worthwhile, no doubt.
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Time to buck trend
Why, since the Law Society’s regulatory function passed to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, should we as a profession (in common with our brethren at the bar) be overseen by so many authoritarian organisations which we are compelled to fund? Surely both the ombudsman and the ...
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Without prejudice
I read Joshua Rozenberg’s 30 August article ‘In good faith’ with interest. The issue of whose rights prevail in the case of conflict is complex. I disagree with his viewpoint though.
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Learning curve
Lucinda Moule called for more selection in state education to improve social mobility. She is wrong.
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Summertime blues as 250 law firms shut
More than 250 law firms have ceased conducting business since the start of summer, but observers are divided on whether the trend is the first sign of long-awaited consolidation or a statistical blip. Data published this week by the Solicitors Regulation Authority show a total ...
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Accutrainee welcomes first recruit
A groundbreaking scheme that finds trainees and seconds them to law firms on a temporary basis has welcomed its first recruit. Flora Hussey has become the first trainee to sign up to Accutrainee since it was launched last September. Trainees are taken on by Accutrainee but ...
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Admiral reveals referral fee income
Insurance giant Admiral has revealed that it rakes in £7 in personal injury referral fees for every vehicle it covers. The figure appears in the company’s half-year financial report, which lists modest increases in ‘other revenue’, including income from referral fees. Admiral insures 3.5m cars in ...
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Oligarch case whets appetite for more
A leading City lawyer says he would welcome more foreign litigation coming to London after the conclusion of a high-profile case involving two Russian oligarchs. The High Court last week found that exiled Russian Boris Berezovsky (pictured) had no claim to the business interests of Roman ...
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Law Society warning over 'monopoly' interpreting deals
The Law Society has warned of the ‘inherent risk’ in granting a monopoly contract to a single provider of courtroom interpreting, but said it lacks sufficient evidence to judge whether the contract awarded to Applied Language Solutions caused a ‘major structural problem’. Responding to the justice ...
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ABS newcomer eyes conveyancing panels
A conveyancing sole practitioner has become an alternative business structure – in a bid to get on to lenders’ conveyancing panels. Nicola Phillips, who has run her own firm in Horsham since 2008, told the Gazette that her status as a sole practitioner has excluded her from panels including those ...
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BSB chastised over ‘bad’ misconduct findings
The first barrister to set up a legal disciplinary practice has overturned her convictions for breaching Bar Standards Board codes on conducting litigation in a public access case. Portia O’Connor (pictured) set up Pegasus Legal Research in 2010. In May 2011 she was convicted by ...
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Calm in a crisis: lawyers and the internet age
There are events in the life-cycle of any business that have the potential to snowball into a crisis of unforeseen proportions. It could be a bad set of financial results or a scuppered merger. Or perhaps employee lay-offs, a high-profile desertion to a rival or allegations of misconduct by senior ...
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Legislative presumption of shared parenting ‘flawed’
Government plans to introduce a legislative presumption of shared parenting could undermine child welfare and increase the volume of litigation, according to the Law Society. Responding to a Ministry of Justice consultation which closed this week, the Society said the government’s proposal to promote co-operative parenting ...
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Law firms 'cut out' of LPO market
The annual global market in outsourcing legal processes has passed the psychologically important billion-dollar (£630m) mark, a market survey claims this week. The 2012 Global LPO Market Study, published by New York-based consultancy The LPO Program, says legal process outsourcing (LPO) employs some 9,000 people. ...
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Grey area
Talk about one-track minds. Of the 178 entries to our competition to name next summer’s legal bestseller, no fewer than 41 were variations on Fifty Shades of Grey. ‘Sorry, you will get that a lot,’ Sarah Taylor observed correctly on her submission Fifty Shades of Gray’s Inn. Bob Sage suggested ...
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Clarke’s trademark insouciance made him ideal for the job of dismantling legal aid
Kenneth Clarke’s singular deportment and affable manner have served to obscure the skeletons in a voluminous ministerial cupboard. Though widely considered a success as John Major’s chancellor, two decades ago he was an architect of the ruinous Private Finance Initiative. Clarke also began the process ...
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Discriminatory acts have a moral significance
by Dr Ronan McCrea, a barrister and lecturer in the Faculty of Laws at University College London Joshua Rozenberg’s piece on the issue of conscience exemptions from anti-discrimination legislation argues that no legitimate aim has been identified for requiring individuals to provide a service in violation ...
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Achieve by sharing problems with other jurisdictions
As is usual for new Law Society presidents at this time of year, I was thrown into the mix of 8,000 lawyers at the American Bar Association’s annual conference, the largest global gathering of lawyers after the International Bar Association’s annual conference. I arrived on American soil with a carefully ...
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Automatic fines ‘top of shopping list’ for SRA
The Solicitors Regulation Authority will call on the government for permission to impose on-the-spot fines for firms that fail to comply with regulatory deadlines. Hundreds of firms are thought to have failed to submit nominations for compliance officers more than a month after a deadline ...
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International law
Foreign sovereign state - Immunity from suit - Applicant company obtaining foreign judgment against one of Iraq’s government ministries Bank and others: SC (Justices of the Supreme Court, Lords Phillips (president), Clarke, Sumption, Reed, Lady Hale): 17 August 2012 ...