Last 3 months headlines – Page 1246
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Legal aid warning over contract allocation
Legal aid firms may go out of business as a result of the allocation of work for new civil legal aid contracts, representative groups have warned. The Legal Services Commission notified firms last week of the outcome of tenders for family, housing and debt, and immigration, ...
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JLD chair claims trainees need more protection
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is failing to protect trainee solicitors from exploitation and threats, the new chair of the Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) has claimed. Heather Iqbal-Rayner (pictured) has drafted a letter to SRA chief executive Antony Townsend in which she claims that the regulator refuses ...
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Chancery Lane must not pull punches
I understand that the president of the Law Society has called for a freeze on civil justice reform, until the effects have been properly researched. This is welcome news. As usual, the Law Society is being civilised and reasonable. But in modern Britain, how effective is ...
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Registry posts mixed signals
The Gazette reported in December that the Land Registry has launched the web version of its electronic document registration service, allowing practitioners to lodge documents electronically, thus saving time and postage costs.
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Dealing with negligence
I read with interest the complaints clinic by Adam Sampson in December. It seems that the three headings ‘Time limits’, ‘Financial limits’ and ‘Prospective customers’ sum up the problems that solicitors have with the Legal Ombudsman.
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Hefty PC fee stuns bank
As a self-employed consultant solicitor representing serving prisoners in the south-west, I was staggered to discover that this year it would cost me a hefty £344 to renew my practising certificate. My bank appeared to agree, as the payment was immediately identified by Santander as a suspicious transaction. ...
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David defeats Goliath
by David Dixon, a senior lecturer at Cardiff Law School who teaches on the LPC and GDL The third week of November was a momentous week in the history of Wales.
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As easy as A-B-S: extra tools in your armoury
It is nearly 10 months since the Solicitors Regulation Authority approved its first alternative business structures and over a year since the regulator was granted permission to do so. How has it been for you? There’s a tendency among some Gazette readers to blame the process ...
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Blighty sets the tone in Chancery Lane hanging
Obiter has noticed that every so often the art world experiences a paradigm shift – think of the Dutch noticing how perspective worked, or the day Tracey Emin decided not to make her bed. Likewise closer to home, where the Law Society Art Group is ...
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Praying for absolution
A two-hour parliamentary committee hearing on banking regulation last week threw up some interestingly different approaches to keeping professionals in line. First up on the topic was Antony Townsend, chief executive of the SRA, who explained that: ‘Those we regulate do look at sanctions and the risk of public identification ...
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Crown succession approach out of kilter
Governments are often accused of legislating in haste and repenting at leisure. One such example is the Succession to the Crown Bill, backed by deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and to be debated in the Commons next week.
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Criminal law
Trial – Robbery – Violent disorder – Burglary R v Donovan and another: Court of Appeal, Criminal Division: 18 December 2012 The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, in allowing ...
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All eyes on the Irish
Another six months has elapsed, and so another presidency of the EU Council of Ministers begins. For the next half-year, the Irish government is in charge, the seventh time that they have led in the past 40 years. The budget for their presidency is, not surprisingly, less than when they ...
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SRA survey is a waste of money
As I sit here at 6.30pm on 19 December wishing it was Christmas, I have just received an email from the Solicitors Regulation Authority in relation to its diversity survey carried out earlier this year. The SRA provides the report to me and ‘expect[s] you to have arrangements in place ...
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Working out data overload
We are obliged to produce a table of the categories of work for practising certificates, divided into percentages for each type of work undertaken. We must also do the same for professional indemnity insurance. However, the breakdown of types of work seems to vary for ...
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Education and training review delayed again
Publication of the Legal Education and Training Review’s (LETR’s) research report, which is expected to recommend the most fundamental reform of legal education in 30 years, has been delayed for a second time with no revised date for when it is likely to be released.
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Parliament rubber-stamps increase to ombudsman’s powers
From 1 February the level of compensation the Legal Ombudsman can award to dissatisfied customers will rise from £30,000 to £50,000. The increase is one of several enhancements to the legal watchdog’s complaints-handling rules agreed by parliament. For the first time the ombudsman will be able ...
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One in five firms likely to seek external investment
A third of small and mid-sized practices are considering merging in the next two or three years and one in five are likely to seek external investment, according to the results of the Law Society Law Management Section’s latest benchmarking survey. The report, published today, revealed ...