Last 3 months headlines – Page 1260
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Private equity marches in to ABSs as Parabis application cleared
City-backed Parabis Law has become the first firm owned by private equity to be licensed as an alternative business structure (ABS). The announcement today brings to 20 the number of ABS applications to be cleared by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
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The destruction of the Forensic Science Service
The Forensic Science Service (FSS) was a government-owned company. It provided services to police forces across England and Wales, together with other agencies such as the Crown Prosecution Service, British Transport Police and HM Revenue & Customs. It also provided services to police forces in other countries.
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Conveyancing panels and separate representation
For at least the past two years, the Law Society has been working hard to respond to a series of unwelcome and often confusing changes to lender panel membership.
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Will litigators be lured by contingency fees?
With the starting gun for contingency fees in commercial litigation due to fire in April 2013, interest in how the new damages-based agreements (DBAs) will work has been building in recent months. Now, with the publication of a set of recommendations from the Civil Justice Council’s DBAs working group, a ...
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Oral contracts to be banned in claims clampdown
Claims management companies (CMCs) will be forced to end oral contract arrangements under rules proposed by the Ministry of Justice today. The MoJ’s Claims Management Regulator (the regulator) will insist that CMCs have to agree contracts with clients in writing before any fees can be taken. ...
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Crown jewels on display
Obiter is relieved to hear that there is no legal reason why new photographs of Prince Harry in the buff cannot be published. According to Andrew Sharpe, a solicitor with LexisPSL, LexisNexis’ practical guidance service, we’d be OK under the Data Protection Act 1998, which ...
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Santander puts panel review on hold
Santander has agreed to pause the ongoing quarterly review of its conveyancing panel and postpone the next review as talks with the Law Society over the process continue. The Society contacted the bank earlier this month seeking an urgent meeting to raise concerns over the review. ...
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Investment drive hits profits at Co-op Legal
Operating profits for Co-operative Legal Services (CLS) fell year-on-year by 63% during the first half of 2012, the organisation revealed today. In its half-year financial report, the Co-operative Group says its legal services arm made a profit of £700,000 as it spent heavily on recruitment and expansion. ...
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Petition fights clinical negligence clawback
Campaigners for accident victims have launched a petition to stop a levy being taken from successful claims funded through legal aid. The Ministry of Justice intends to impose the Supplementary Legal Aid Scheme (SLAS) from April 2013, to allow for up to 25% of damages awards ...
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The importance of legal office design
If you want to understand an organisation, take a look at the place it calls home. Offices by their very nature reflect what goes on inside them and how the organisation sees itself. And when an organisation changes, so too does its workplace.
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ABSs ‘put 2,000 firms at risk’
More than 2,000 law firms are at risk of failure in the next year because of competition from alternative business structures (ABSs). That is the claim of insolvency trade body R3, after studying data from Bureau van Dijk’s ‘Fame’ database. The figures, which place existing businesses ...
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Eight days a week: a job description not a song
Lawyers and other legal professionals put in the equivalent of eight working days a week, a survey has revealed. And two-fifths of them feel more stressed by work than they did a year ago. In a survey of more than 2,000 British employees, international recruiter Randstad ...
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ABSs: a veritable ‘who’s that?’
Watching the trickle of new alternative business structure licence announcements has been like the opening night of Celebrity Big Brother. We’ve had a couple of famous faces we knew about in advance and a few surprises, but mostly it’s been a case of running to Google to find out who ...
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Davies gets three more years at consumer panel
The Legal Services Board (LSB) today announced the re-appointment of Elisabeth Davies (pictured) as chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel. Davies’s new appointment runs from 1 August 2012 to 31 March 2015. She has been interim chair following the resignation last year of Lady Hayter.
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Happy with McNally
Did the fight to protect legal aid from the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act get under the skin of Liberal Democrat rank and file? Or are the party’s activists just quick to forgive? Obiter wonders. ...
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Lawyers and the 1960s
I am in the US, and as I move around places to stay, I read whatever previous holidaymakers have left behind in our apartment. It makes for variety and unexpected choices. In our current accommodation, there is a book called Boom! by Tom Brokaw, which is described as ‘Voices of ...
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Irwin Mitchell shows a flush of ABS licences
National firm Irwin Mitchell has today become the first multi-licensed alternative business structure, with five licences covering a range of its business operations.
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We’ll publish all on complaints, LeO states
The Legal Ombudsman has reaffirmed its commitment to making public complaints data about lawyers and firms despite a delay in publication. Chief Ombudsman Adam Sampson (pictured) said the first quarter’s data – including around 900 decisions – will be published ‘sometime in the autumn’.
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It is often the hardest cases that are sent for mediation
It is a common (mis)conception that litigation and delay go hand in glove. Defendants perceive claimants as averse to settlement because they want to 'costs build'; claimants perceive insurers as averse to settlement because they want to retain their funds as long as possible. Both suggest that delays in the ...
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MoJ improving – but financial performance ‘unacceptable’, MPs say
The Ministry of Justice is blighted by poor financial management and a lack of expertise for drawing up outsourcing contracts, a select committee states today. A report by the Justice Select Committee says while improvements had been made in structure in the five years since the ...