Last 3 months headlines – Page 1190
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Foreign territory
Martin Maloney responds to my response to his original letter about assumptions of guilt within criminal law procedure. In essence, Mr Maloney repeats his previous assertions which I have already answered; basically that what distinguishes us from others is that we are lawyers and that this is a legal journal. ...
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What's your firm called?
Anita Scott in Scarborough writes to wish London firms Teacher Stern and Butcher Burns success in their merger. ‘I was a little disappointed, however, that they did not adopt the name Stern Teacher Burns Butcher.’ With mergers increasingly à la mode, Obiter hopes to see ...
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Budsworth gears up for laughs
Obiter was reminded of Roald Dahl’s The Witches last week, when a small boy is led into a room full of snarling crones and turned into a mouse. Of course no such fate awaited the Motor Accidents Solicitors Society chairman Craig Budsworth as he stepped ...
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Browbeaten spouses
The marital coercion defence raised by Vicky Pryce has had a long if intermittent history. It stemmed from the time when, because they often could not read and write, women were denied the benefit of clergy at assizes and so could not avoid punishment.
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Pedal power propels lawyers to Paris
So, what did you do in February? Lawyers at JD Spicer Zeb Solicitors cycled from London to Paris to raise funds for the Free Representation Unit. Simon Maughan and Michael Situ led the ride, which covered over 200 miles in three days and has so far raised close to £2,000. ...
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Curse of the Tome Raiders
Help for newly ensconced COLPs and COFAs was at hand this week at franchise network HighStreetLawyer.com’s conference at Chancery Lane. One top tip came from risk manager PNCR Legal’s Tim Prior, who noted that many COLPs and COFAs are still struggling with keeping systems and policies up to date. ...
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Ten-point plan for solicitors to cut claims delays
Solicitors can cut delays in processing claims at the County Court Money Claims Centre by not stapling forms together, the centre has suggested. The advice appears in a list of ways in which ‘customers’ can help the much-criticised Salford centre, which marks its first birthday ...
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UK law firms are making headway in the tough South Korean market
North Korea’s belligerence casts a long shadow over its southern neighbour. But South Korea has shown it can develop and thrive despite the tension across the 38th parallel. It is, many insist, a good time for UK law firms to be thinking about South Korea. Although the country has ...
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Half of all tribunal fines remain unpaid
Nearly half of the solicitors fined by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in recent years have avoided paying those fines in full, figures obtained by the Gazette reveal. Of 579 cases since 2008 in which such a penalty was imposed, the fine has yet to be ...
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Lloyds counsels calm on credit
High street firms should not fear a ‘kneejerk’ reaction from banks restricting lending in the wake of high-profile firm failures, according to a big-four bank. The collapse of Manchester firm Cobbetts in January, which followed the demise in 2010 of regional giant Halliwells, has led ...
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Nine out of 10 oppose criminal tendering plan
Nearly 90% of solicitors are opposed to price-competitive tendering (PCT) for criminal defence work, a Law Society survey has revealed, after the government announced accelerated plans for its introduction. The online poll of 200 solicitors showed overwhelming opposition to tendering – 89% strongly disagreed or disagreed ...
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Drug and Alcohol Court pioneers drink monitors
The judge leading London’s pioneering Family Drug and Alcohol Court has voiced concern that lack of money will stop families in care cases getting adequate support to turn their lives around. Judge Nicholas Crichton (pictured) spoke to the Gazette following the end of a three-month pilot ...
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No ‘stay of execution’ from banks for PI firms
Personal injury firms will struggle to convince banks that they are viable when fees are slashed next month, an insolvency expert has warned. Practices across the country have begun making redundancies ahead of fixed recoverable costs being cut by 60% at the end of April, the ...
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Eight-week PCT consultation period looks like a fig leaf
Like striking miners in the 1980s, criminal defenders must sometimes feel they are treated as the ‘enemy within’ by government. Pointedly overlooked for their role in expediting justice after the 2011 August riots, they have now been hit by an accelerated price tendering process which bears all the hallmarks of ...
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The Children and Families Bill could undermine gender stereotypes
by Charlotte Bradley, a family partner, andMichelle Chance an employment partner, at Kingsley Napley On 25 February, MPs passed the new Children and Families Bill at its second reading in the House of Commons. The bill extends the statutory rights – in employment and family law ...
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Mid Staffs negligence ‘explosion’ predicted
NHS hospitals must brace themselves for an ‘explosion’ in medical negligence claims in the aftermath of the report into the Mid Staffordshire scandal, a leading lawyer in the sector has said. Tim Gorman, partner at clinical negligence firm Axiclaim, said last month’s publication of the Francis ...
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Call to suspend Sri Lanka from Commonwealth
A report for the Bar Human Rights Committee has called for Sri Lanka to be suspended from the Commonwealth over the impeachment of the country’s chief justice. Barrister and report author Geoffrey Robertson QC said Dr Shirani Bandaranayake (pictured), Sri Lanka’s first woman judge and chief ...
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Businesses cite human rights act in disputes
Businesses are increasingly using human rights arguments in commercial disputes, with the number of such cases increasing from 10 to 45 in four years, new research has revealed. A study by legal information provider Sweet & Maxwell reports cases in 2012 that included a radio station ...
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Coping with the global
Solicitors have been one of the beneficiaries and promoters of globalisation in legal services. It is not a success that could reasonably have been predicted back in the 1960s. I suppose that its causes lie in multiple factors, including: the removal of the cap on the number of partners in ...