Last 3 months headlines – Page 1262
-
News
Property management business becomes latest ABS
A property management company based in London has become the latest organisation to be granted a licence as an alternative business structure. Crabtree Property Management, established in 1983, says it runs more than 17,000 units in a portfolio spread across London and the south of England. ...
-
News
Debt judgments down by 27%, new figures show
The combined value of UK debt judgments fell sharply last year, according to statistics collected from courts across the UK. Figures released yesterday by Registry Trust, a non-profit company which runs a UK-wide register of judgment information, also show a rise in the use of ...
-
News
An earthquake in US legal education
If you are feeling miserable about lawyer problems in our jurisdiction, read this and put your feelings in perspective. Last week, I wrote about going to the American Bar Association’s (ABA) annual meeting to learn. Well, here comes the most important thing I discovered: the legal education system in the ...
-
News
SRA ponders policing of referral fee ban
The Solicitors Regulation Authority will set out within weeks how it intends to police the forthcoming ban on referral fees. The SRA has confirmed it will draw up a formal policy position in advance of a 12-week consultation starting this autumn. The ...
-
News
Society slams ‘flawed’ logic on harassment liability plan
The Law Society has criticised the ‘fundamentally flawed’ logic behind government plans to scrap an employer’s liability for a third party’s harassment of an employee. The plan, set out in a Government Equalities Office consultation which closed on 7 August, argues that such liability is an ...
-
News
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.
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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.
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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 ...
-
News
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.
-
News
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. ...
-
News
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 ...