Last 3 months headlines – Page 1245
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Watchdog plans hefty rise in compensation maximum
The Legal Ombudsman is planning a 66% rise - to £50,000 - in the maximum amount of compensation it can force lawyers to pay clients who receive poor service. It also plans a six-fold increase - to six years - in the time limit within ...
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No time to waste on adoption reform
Until the government announced its plans to speed up adoptions this month, I confess I knew very little about the process. When I looked into it, I was shocked both by how fragmented the system is and how long it takes. ...
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Lessons from Egypt
I have just come back from a short business trip to Cairo. ‘Don’t go! You must be mad!’ I received worried messages while I was there, and was advised not to venture out on my own.
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Banks make quality scheme a must for new panel firms
The Law Society claimed further success for its Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) today after two banks announced that membership will be compulsory for firms joining their lender panels and two Top 100 firms signed up. Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank, both part of the National Australia ...
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Jackson says one-third of his clinical negligence proposals at risk
The architect of the government’s civil justice reforms has admitted the ‘jury is still out’ on a third of his proposals for clinical negligence. Lord Justice Jackson said there had been little progress on three of the nine recommendations made when his report on costs was ...
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Advocate quality deal leaves plea-only question unsettled
An agreement reached last week over accreditation for advocates has failed to settle a key point of difference between barristers and solicitors. In a joint briefing published on Friday, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), Bar Standards Board (BSB) and Ilex Professional Standards announced that they had reached an agreement on ...
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Investment clubs
Recently I was asked about the law relating to investment clubs. The investment club had been going for many years, with meetings arranged on a monthly basis, and had about 50 members each contributing a reasonably modest amount per month. A problem arose when their broker, who supplied investment advice ...
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Child access for father in lesbian family case
The appellant was a 'donor' father seeking a fuller relationship with and contact to his son. A ('the father') and B ('the biological mother') conceived M, a boy aged 2, via artificial insemination. M lived with the mother and C, the mother’s long-term lesbian partner ('the psychological mother'). ...
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New York wants to wake up in a city without ABSs
New York state legal authorities have reaffirmed their resistance to non-lawyer ownership of firms. In a decision likely to affect international firms, New York Bar Association this week ruled that lawyers cannot practise in the state if their firm is owned by non-lawyers, even if the owners are overseas.
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Ditch the Porsche and fund an ‘apprentice’
A packet of wine gums at a provincial cinema; a large cappuccino at Starbucks; or maybe 10 minutes of Premier League football. That’s what a trainee will be able to buy for an hour’s work when the Solicitors Regulation Authority does away with the minimum wage.
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Where should lawyers go to meet the public?
This morning I bought my newspaper from a branch of a national chain of newsagents. As has been well reported, other branches sometimes include a stall run by lawyers whose firm has joined a national franchise. It is one of the supposedly big scary initiatives that will enable this franchise, ...
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Advocacy compromise deal includes judicial assessment
Judicial assessment will remain a ‘central element’ of the controversial quality assurance scheme for advocates, legal regulators announced today. However it will apply only to Crown court advocates. Accreditations will begin this summer. Under an agreement on the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates (QASA) announced ...
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Lord Young shuns meeting with profession’s regulator
Lord Young of Graffham turned down an offer to meet with the solicitors' regulator in advance of his report on health and safety and the ‘compensation culture’, the Solicitors Regulation Authority has said. The SRA said it had ‘offered to engage’ with Young during the research ...
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Claims portal won’t cope with expansion, say solicitors
Solicitors have warned the government there is no way to fast-track employer and public liability claims through the existing low-value scheme. The Ministry of Justice met key stakeholders yesterday for discussions on the proposed expansion of the road traffic accident (RTA) portal scheme. ...
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Lenders move to common approach on panel management
The Law Society has welcomed a move by lenders to create a single national repository of data about firms on conveyancing panels. Leading lenders, including Lloyds Banking Group and Santander, have set up a working group, facilitated by the Council of Mortgage Lenders, to develop the repository. The group ...
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Manchester PI firm goes under
National firm Irwin Mitchell has agreed a deal to take on the files of Manchester personal injury firm Donns which went into administration today. Some 50 staff members are thought to have been made redundant. Irwin Mitchell confirmed this afternoon that an arrangement had been made ...
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Intellectual property
European Communities - Database rights - Infringement Football Dataco Ltd and other companies v Yahoo! UK Ltd and others: Court of Justice of the European Communities (Third Chamber) (Judges Lenaerts (Rapporteur), president of the Chamber, Malenovský, Juhász, Arestis and ...