Last 3 months headlines – Page 1291
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Board shakeup at Chancery Lane
The Law Society has announced plans to streamline its executive leadership structure to ‘enable the organisation to strengthen its service provision’. Chancery Lane is creating three new senior roles that will be accountable for its representation work, professional services and internal operations. ...
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Whiplash compensation system 'open to fraud'
Three-quarters of healthcare professionals believe the current system of compensation for whiplash is open to fraud. A survey of more than 500 GPs, physiotherapists and consultants found widespread scepticism about the process of claiming after accidents. Almost 90% believe some whiplash ...
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Sentencing
Imprisonment - Length of sentence - Violent disorder - Defendant involved in student protests over tuition fees R v Gilmour: CA (Crim Div) (Lord Justice Hughes, Mr Justice Cranston, Mr Justice Hickinbottom): 28 October 2011 ...
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Bar Conference 2011: barristers 'ready to strike' over tendering plan
Criminal barristers will take ‘direct action’ - including withdrawing their services - if the government presses ahead with its plans for price-competitive tendering, the chair of the Criminal Bar Association has warned. Max Hill QC (pictured) said that the proposal to introduce best value tendering for the provision of publicly ...
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Bar Conference 2011: chambers eye direct service offers
A growing number of barristers are looking to offer services directly to the public, which could help them gain legal aid contracts, the head of the bar told delegates. Peter Lodder QC (pictured) said hundreds of barristers had already completed the public access training courses that ...
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Jurisdiction
Court of Appeal - Appeal from Divisional Court - Whether permission to appeal to be granted R (on the application of Guardian News and Media Ltd) v City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court: CA (Civ Div) (Lord Justices Neuberger (master ...
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Bar Conference 2011: regulator anxious to maintain independence
Bar regulators are determined to avert an ‘Enron-style loss of independence’ in the profession, as the liberalisation of legal services gathers momentum, Bar Conference 2011 heard. Patricia Robertson QC (pictured), a member of the Bar Standards Board (BSB), said the body has no desire to ...
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Employment
Victimisation - Protected disclosure - Employees making protected disclosure - Employment Rights Act 1996 Fecitt and others v NHS Manchester: CA (Civ Div) (Lord Justices Mummery, Elias, Davis): 25 October 2011 ...
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Bar Conference 2011: women lawyers need ‘change of attitude’
More must be done to encourage women to stay at the bar and apply for silk and judicial office, according to a panel of eminent women in the profession. The panel, comprising Family Division judge Mrs Justice Theis, Bar Standards Board chair Lady Deech and barristers ...
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Service provision change rule could lead to employment law uncertainty and costly challenges
Reading the recent article ‘Clarke confirms legal aid tender move’, I wonder whether the potential implications of Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (TUPE) have been considered by Kenneth Clarke. It is possible that if a small number of firms are successful there may be a ...
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Domestic harmony
Laura Hodgson's article about the problems women and some other groups have in achieving senior roles quoted Baroness Hale, our only female Supreme Court judge. About 10-19% of City equity partners are female; not too different from the statistic for female membership of the cabinet. ...
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Quality conscious
We write from a firm which, according to Mr Craig Holt, the chief executive of QualitySolicitors, is clearly less profitable, less efficient and about to be squeezed out of the market by his company. We have no doubt that Mr Holt knows his own business, but ...
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Land bank offence
Some solicitors will have become aware of ‘land banking’ operations over recent years. For those who are not aware, these involve a company buying a plot of agricultural land, setting up a scheme to make it look as though it has development potential, and then selling ‘plots’ at a huge ...
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Support legal aid
I urge readers to help legal aid practitioners by writing to Lord Bach along the lines of my own recent letter to him, which followed a Gazettenews item on 20 October: ‘We are a "high street legal aid practice" whose very existence is seriously threatened by the 10% cuts in ...
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Proceeds of crime
Unlawful conduct - Violent disorder - Costs - Civil recovery proceedings Gale and another v Serious Organised Crime Agency: SC (Lords Phillips (president), Brown, Mance, Judge, Clarke, Dyson, Reed): 26 October 2011 ...
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Abuse of process
The courts have made it difficult to stay criminal proceedings for abuse of process. Abuse can be argued in two ways: either that it is not fair that there be a trial; or that it is not possible for any trial to be fair. The first ...
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All rise for Mr Justice Squeezy
Obiter was rewarded for attendance at the Bar Council’s annual conference last weekend, not just by getting to spend a Saturday in the company of around 600 barristers, but with a novel conference freebie in the form of a squeezy judge. Inner Temple was giving ...
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Though cowards flinch, and traitors sneer
To One Great George Street in the heart of Westminster for ...
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You don't have mail
A pigeon alights on Obiter’s window ledge with the news that tomorrow (11 November) is national no-email day. Web guru Paul Lancaster says the idea is not to abolish email but to ignore it for 24 hours and ‘do something more productive with the time saved’. This could simply involve ...
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Legal drinkers under siege
Never mind St Paul’s Cathedral, Obiter is more concerned about the possibility of ‘Occupy’ protests interrupting services at another London institution. The La Paquerette bistro is slap in the middle of Finsbury Square, currently a protest camp site. One legal firm has already emailed the Gazette to say it may ...