Last 3 months headlines – Page 1300
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Rise in NHS negligence claims expected
Claims against the NHS are likely to rise this year as cases are pushed through ahead of funding reforms, according to the new head of the NHS Litigation Authority.
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No extra pay for ‘speedy’ justice
Solicitors could end up working seven days a week without extra pay to cover anti-social hours under government plans to extend court sittings. Proposals to introduce early morning and evening sittings and Sunday courts were among measures set out last week in a white paper ...
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Turn to arbitration and slash costs, town halls told
Local authorities could save 95% of the typical cost of taking cases to court by turning to specialist arbitration, according to a not-for-profit organisation providing such services. The London-based Centre for Justice said public bodies are losing up to 10% of their budgets annually in ...
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‘Frumpy legal profession’ in need of revolution
The threats and challenges faced by lawyers can be blamed on the ‘egregious failure of a frumpy profession’ to reform itself in line with the rapidly changing legal landscape, a Canadian law professor told the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) Symposium in Manchester last week.
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Courtroom interpreter 'savings' evaporate
The Ministry of Justice has admitted that £12m of savings predicted for the first year of controversial new arrangements for courtroom interpreting ‘will probably not be achieved’. The announcement, by justice minister Lord McNally, came as the ministry declined to reveal the cost of the ...
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Sixth annual bar placement scheme
The Bar Council hosted its sixth annual bar placement scheme last week, in conjunction with the Social Mobility Foundation. The scheme encourages talented children to aim for the bar regardless of their social or economic background.
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Barclays’ Libor fixing ‘voided’ swaps deals
Barclays’ manipulation of the London inter-bank offered rate (Libor) may have rendered tens of thousands of customer agreements that reference Libor ‘void’, according to a £12m claim against the bank. The case could open the way to claims for sums far exceeding direct losses incurred through Libor manipulation, admitted in ...
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PII special: overview - sea change
Since moving to the open market in 2000, many solicitors’ firms have complained of professional indemnity insurance (PII) premium price hikes. As one anonymous lawyer put it: ‘Let’s not pretend that the insurers are some sort of benign force existing to help anyone. They are there to take premiums and ...
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European court in judicial selection crisis
The crisis in Europe’s top court was set to escalate this week, with the 27 EU member states arguing over how to select 12 more judges to help handle a mounting caseload. The president of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which is ...
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Local government: standards regime; disability payment challenge
So, farewell then, the Model Code of Conduct Order 2007. As 6 June saw the long-overdue birth of the (almost) final statutory measures to launch the new and battle-scarred standards regime, on 1 July the ancien standards régime was quietly euthanised - subject to the temporary reprieve of a few ...
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PII special: guidance for firms
There is now a great deal of information and guidance available to help legal practices find the right professional indemnity insurance (PII) package for their needs. I hope that legal practices will not go into the renewal process without using this free advice.
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MoJ ‘hell-bent’ on expanding RTA process
The government this week rejected calls to tear up its timetable for boosting the role of the RTA portal for low-value claims - despite a call by its own expert adviser for a pause. In a long-awaited report published on the day before parliament’s summer recess, ...
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Intellectual property
Interlocutory - Damages not appropriate remedy EMI (IP) Ltd v British Sky Broadcasting Group plc: Chancery Division (Mr John Baldwin QC (Sitting as a Deputy Judge of the Chancery Division)): 25 June 2012 ...
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PII special: pooling resources
One of the major challenges we have faced in recent times as a public interest regulator has been to ensure that we have professional indemnity insurance (PII) arrangements in place which provide the required level of consumer protection and are sustainable for the long term.
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PII special: top tips
Over 10,000 firms of solicitors in England and Wales will again be pulling together their applications for professional indemnity insurance (PII) renewal. Preparation is paramount because, as we all know, the 1 October deadline always comes too soon. As has been the case for several years now, insurers remain cautious ...
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Plans to rush cases through system are half-baked and dangerous
by Julian Young senior partner of central London firm Julian Young & Co and a solicitor-advocate We are seeing an increasing number of initiatives from ministers and civil servants to rush cases through the lower courts at breakneck speed.
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Dabbling in politics
Just what is going on with our leading firms? Last week the Guardian reported that the big cheeses of the accountancy world - KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and Ernst & Young - were almost permanent fixtures in the corridors of power. Electoral Commission figures showed the firms had donated £1.9m in ...
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Mine's a Baileys
Still humbled by the phenomenal response to the legal cocktail competition, Obiter’s representatives on earth (the Gazette editorial team) set out to test the winning cocktails as promised.
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Watch your language
Obiter commends HM Judiciary for the commendable dispatch with which it now distributes judgments to media organisations - a real boon, this. And we have enormous sympathy on those not infrequent occasions when its good intentions fall foul of ever more zealous internet firewalls. So it was that news of ...
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Memory lane
That a tendency towards self-advertisement is a most serious defect in the character of a solicitor has recently been rather forcibly brought home to me. An article of mine on a religious subject appeared in the May issue of our parish magazine. The editor, approving its ...