Last 3 months headlines – Page 1193
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New potential market in aviation claims
Law firms have a potential market of as many as one million claimants who may be eligible for compensation for delayed flights, it has been suggested. Personal injury specialist Bott & Co said this week it has recovered €300,000 for 600 clients in the 100 days ...
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The legal profession is on the banks of a Rubicon
This column occasionally quotes Yes Minister, with the excuse that the now antique sitcom is more educational than any politics degree. In The Writing on the Wall, mandarin perm sec Sir Humphrey Appleby advises Jim Hacker of one crackpot policy: ‘Minister, if you are going to do this damn silly ...
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NHS cuts do not help - but often clients just want answers
by Mehmooda Duke, managing director of medical negligence lawyers Moosa-Duke I have believed for years that there must be a correlation between government spending on the NHS and the number of medical negligence cases brought against it.
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SRA takes over 16 months to approve ABS
The Solicitors Regulation Authority took a record 16 months and 26 days to process the alternative business structure application of personal injury firm Minster Law, it has emerged. Outgoing Minster chairman Adrian Christmas told the Gazette that he applied to gain ABS status on 3 January ...
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Reformation relics fetch £900k for Law Society
The Law Society has raised more than £900,000 from the sale of anti-Catholic polemical and associated artefacts bequeathed to it in the 19th century. The Mendham Collection, assembled by Anglican clergyman Joseph Mendham (1769-1856), contained mostly 15th and 16th century books relating to the Reformation. Items ...
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An advocate and an avocado
No barricades ablaze at the ‘Save Legal Aid’ demo outside the Ministry of Justice last Tuesday, even if the road was entirely blocked by protesters. But Obiter noticed that lawyers are getting more accustomed to the etiquette of protest. Invited by a megaphone firebrand to ‘not be so polite’, at ...
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IT firm offers route round referral fee ban
A legal technology firm is promoting a business plan which it says will allow solicitors to continue working with personal injury referrers. The company, Epoq, has created LegalGo, a free assistance plan that claims management companies distribute to claimants. The CMC signs ...
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Firms braced for spending squeeze
Top-100 law firms face a squeeze in client legal spending over the next 12 months, because almost all corporate clients who have not yet reviewed instructions and spend plan to do so. The result will be massive consolidation among the magic circle’s chasing pack, according ...
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Small claims track
The likelihood is that the majority of litigators have never ventured down into the basement of the county court where retailers and their embittered customers, and landlords and their carpet-staining former tenants scream out their stories and storm out if they lose. This is the basement which hosts small claims, ...
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Support our Turkish colleagues
‘The history of lawyers is the history of society in general.’ That’s my theory anyway, and it can be tested by tracing a country’s trends from what is happening to its lawyers. The ethics-lite market fundamentalism visited upon our profession is a mirror of the country’s history during the Thatcher-Blair ...
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Out and about with MW
Obiter recalls when you weren’t allowed to see an advert for a solicitor – in Croydon these days you can’t move for one. South-east full-service firm McMillan Williams has agreed a sponsorship deal to put its logo on every public transport vehicle in town. ...
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CMS students shape up
To CMS Cameron McKenna, where pupils and students had started the day with entrepreneur James Caan and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg as part of the ‘Opening Doors’ social mobility campaign, before going on to a publisher and a bank.
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Thousands take up arms over cuts
The fight against the government’s Transforming Legal Aid reforms heated up last week as a consultation on the proposals closed with more than 13,000 responses understood to have been lodged with the Ministry of Justice. Although the ministry could not confirm the figure, this would ...
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Memory lane
The Law Society’s Gazette, June 1963Criminal legal aid The interim report on legal aid in criminal appeals published recently by ‘Justice’ was followed almost immediately by the final report of the working party on legal aid in criminal proceedings. Both reports describe the existing facilities quite ...
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Former solicitor convicted in £20m fraud case
A former solicitor was among five people convicted in a £20m mortgage fraud at Mold Crown Court last week. Nicholas John Jones, 53, who at the time worked at Ravencourt Legal Services in Flint, was convicted along with two property speculators, a surveyor and a financial ...
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Coming soon – fixed defendant costs in PI
At the end of July, the current protocol for low-value road traffic accident claims will be extended to claims worth up to £25,000, and new protocols will be introduced for employers’ and public liability personal injury claims – draft copies of which have been published. New fixed recoverable fees for ...
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SRA approves first barrister-led ABS
A London chambers specialising in immigration law has become the first barrister-led practice to apply successfully for ABS status. The Solicitors Regulation Authority said Richmond Chambers was the first of its 152 alternative business structures to be headed by barristers. Although members ...
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SRA puts a price on extra intervention levy
Each solicitor may have to pay an extra £23 a year in compensation fund contributions to pay for future interventions into failing firms. The Solicitors Regulation Authority has decided to use the compensation fund to meet the estimated £7m budget overspend on interventions this year, occasioned ...
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Breach of contract
Licence agreement being made between publishing company (Bright Star) and defendant permitting defendant to re-package Reader's Digest book edition of 'Wildlife of Britain' Morse v Eaglemoss Publications Ltd: Chancery Division: 7 June 2013 ...