Last 3 months headlines – Page 1194
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Can a court still be scandalised?
Scandalising the court. The phrase summons images of swooning judges, wigs askew, smelling salts wafted beneath judicial nostrils. Which is nonsense, really, because judges, perhaps more than any of us, have seen and heard it all. They are just not the swooning sort.
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Chancery Lane confronts Santander on panel membership
The Law Society is to hold ‘urgent’ talks with Santander to address its ‘grave’ concerns over the lender’s decision to remove hundreds of solicitors from its conveyancing panel. The move follows claims by the Law Society that hundreds of firms have been taken off the lender’s ...
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MoJ moves on claims companies
Claims management companies (CMCs) will be banned from offering incentives to the public if their solicitors accept a case, under new rules to be introduced in April 2013, the claims management regulation (CMR) unit has announced today. The CMR unit’s annual report, published today, also revealed ...
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Preservation of the Youth Justice Board is vital
Action over the last decade to tackle youth offending appears to be succeeding, according to the annual report from the Youth Justice Board (YJB), published this summer. The board was set up in 1997 to oversee the youth justice system and safeguard the welfare of ...
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Top-100 law firm Howard Kennedy and Finers Stephens Innocent to merge
UK top-100 law firm Howard Kennedy and Finers Stephens Innocent LLP (FSI) have agreed a deal to merge later this year. The London firms announced they have signed heads of agreement with a view to merging under the name of Howard Kennedy FSI by 1 November ...
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Solicitors shun training review
Solicitors submitted a ‘disappointingly low’ one-eighth of the almost 1,000 completed Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) surveys so far received by the review’s research team. In contrast, barristers make up almost two-fifths of the responses.
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SRA research reveals 'power' of high street firms
High street firms have ‘power’ and are known in their communities, the first phase of a consumer research project conducted by the Solicitors Regulation Authority has revealed. The study to look at how the public access legal services was commenced last month and announced today. Over ...
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Benefit fraud: claim/review forms
This is the second of four articles prompted by the case of Coventry City Council v Vassel 2011 EWHC 1542 Admin. In particular, it looks at mens rea and the difficulties that arise when local authorities fail to give adequate information to benefit claimants on how to notify a change ...
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Banks could not accept the financial products market was saturated
Disputes over interest rate hedging (derivatives) products sold by banks are in the news again this week – this time US state and local governments are looking at whether the products were ‘mis-sold’ and whether they have a case. Closer to home, as predicted by UK lawyers I spoke to ...
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SRA ditches online roll list
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has abandoned its online system for maintaining a list of solicitors who want to stay on the roll, costing it hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost fees. There are around 35,000 qualified solicitors who do not have practising certificates, but who ...
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New patron of legal diversity trust
Conservative life peer Baroness Sandip Verma of Leicester has become patron of the BLD Foundation, a group that works to improve diversity and social mobility in the legal profession. The BLD (formerly Black Lawyers Directory) Foundation provides young people with access to an array of ...
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Chancery Lane’s Olympic Gold
Obiter is removing a hat to cheer double Olympic medal winner and Law Society member of staff William Styles (pictured). Styles won a gold and a silver. And he has already got his own Wikipedia entry.
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Helena Kennedy QC to co-chair IBAHRI
The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) has announced that Lady Helena Kennedy QC will become its first female co-chair. The peer and former barrister will join existing co-chair Sternford Moyo, the former president of the Zimbabwe Law Society, to lead the IBAHRI Council. ...
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Partners block promotion prospects
One in three solicitors in private practice blames their ‘stifled’ career progression on increased competition from their peers combined with fewer partners retiring, a survey has revealed. The survey of more than 200 private practice solicitors, published today by recruiters Laurence Simons, quoted Law Society ...
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Should funders bring collective actions?
As the government closed its consultation on collective actions in competition law cases at the end of last month, there was an outcry from business groups warning against the plans. Among the critics were the CBI, and our old friends the Institute of Legal Reform ...
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Professor Gus John to carry out SRA racism review
Professor Gus John is to carry out an independent comparative case review to determine if there is any evidence of racism in the way the Solicitors Regulation Authority investigates black and minority ethnic (BME) solicitors.
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DPAs must be transparent, Chancery Lane warns
Deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) could improve the way economic crime committed by commercial organisations is dealt with, but the process must be transparent to retain public confidence, the Law Society has said.
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DPAs must be transparent, Chancery Lane warns
Deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) could improve the way economic crime committed by commercial organisations is dealt with, but the process must be transparent to retain public confidence, the Law Society has said.
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Government wrong to make graduate stack shelves, High Court rules
The government was wrong to require a graduate to leave her internship in a museum to stack shelves in a high street shop, a high court judge ruled today. However, the government had not breached her human right to protection from slavery and forced labour, the ...