Last 3 months headlines – Page 1313
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Former City partner gets three years for £1.3m fraud
A former Hogan Lovells partner has been jailed for three years after defrauding his firm of £1.3m. Christopher Grierson (pictured) was sentenced today at Southwark Crown Court after pleading guilty in March to four charges of false accounting. Grierson, who was dismissed by his firm in ...
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Only two solicitors apply for silk round
The number of applications for silk has dropped for the third year running with only two solicitors among the 183 applicants, figures released by the independent selection panel revealed today. In 2011, there were 214 applications, compared with 251 in 2010 which was down from 275 ...
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Quiz your broker on fees, Society urges firms
The Law Society will today publish insurance guidance urging solicitors to exercise their rights and find out exactly what their broker is being paid. The 2012 PII Buyers’ Guide will help solicitors find out from their brokers all the fees and commissions they receive - as ...
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Law-making at decade low
The number of legislative changes last year fell to its lowest in almost a decade, according to figures published yesterday by Sweet & Maxwell. Data highlighted that 99% of the new laws were passed as statutory instruments, without being subjected to full parliamentary scrutiny. ...
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Law Society wary of 'secret justice' plan
Civil liberties groups today dismissed as 'spin' government claims that pre-publication changes to the Justice and Security Bill would protect the public without damaging ‘historic freedoms’ of open justice and accountability. In a concession to critics of a green paper last year, the bill scales back ...
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Living in a time of perilous uncertainty
This is a piece about mood and atmosphere: how it feels to live and work in Brussels at a time of feverish speculation about the European Union’s future. It says something of the stability of the last few decades that it is the first occasion in my life that I ...
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Is it wrong to profit from divorce litigation?
There are some intriguing developments in the financing of divorce cases at the moment. Investment in divorce litigation hit the headlines earlier in the year with the high-profile divorce of Michelle Young from her millionaire former husband Scot, described in the press as a 'fixer’ for ...
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New Society sections open to non-solicitors
The Law Society has announced that it has set up two new sections with membership open to non-solicitors. The Equality and Diversity (E&D) Section and the Family Section will both launch on 25 June. The E&D Section is open to solicitors practising ...
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Call to halt referral fee ‘auctions’
A personal injury solicitor has accused insurance companies of ‘auctioning cases to the highest bidder’. John Spencer (pictured), director of Spencers Solicitors, said some insurers had conducted referral fee auctions amongst solicitors for bundles of cases. The price tag of these bundles was likely to be ...
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Eric Pickles, where are these Jubilee jobsworths?
Next week the nation will unite to celebrate the fact that an elderly woman isn’t dead yet. The Queen will reach her Diamond Jubilee, and as punishment she’ll have to suffer thousands of idiot well-wishers, the BBC disappearing up her backside and a concert featuring Ed ...
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The London Legal Walk: a show of solidarity
Times are hard in certain sections of the legal profession. There are many different views on what would be an appropriate response to the cuts in public funding scheduled to come into force in April 2013. Some believe that pro bono is a necessary safety net to protect the most ...
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Keeping the Pirates at Bay (or away from it)
In 2003, a group of friends living in Sweden launched a website which quickly became one of the most notorious sites on the internet - a file-sharing website known as The Pirate Bay. The High Court has now instructed five internet service providers (ISPs) to take measures to block their ...
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Will-writing and property firms bring ABS total to seven
Two niche firms specialising in will-writing and property respectively have become the latest two organisations to be accepted as alternative business structures (ABSs). Parchment Group, based in Buckinghamshire, and three-partner firm Plainlaw, based in Oxfordshire, had their applications confirmed this week by the Solicitors Regulation Authority ...
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Don’t rush into fee change, PI lawyers warn government
Personal injury lawyers have urged the government not to be rushed into radical changes to the low-value claims system. The government today closed its call for evidence and opinion on the future of the RTA Portal as it seeks to reduce the number of claims being ...
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Intellectual property
Patents Court - Jurisdiction Suh and another v Ryu and others: Patents County Court (Judge Birss QC): 3 May 2012 The Patents County Court held that regulation 3(2)(b) of the ...
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Intellectual property
Patent - Infringement - Order for destruction Merck Canada Inc and another v Sigma Pharmaceuticals plc: Patents County Court (Judge Birss QC): 3 May 2012 The Patents County Court granted ...
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Criminal evidence
Hearsay - Document - Whether conviction on count 1 unsafe R v Ibrahim: Court of Appeal, Criminal Division (Lord Justice Aikens, Mr Justice Field and Judge Nicholas Cooke QC): 27 April 2012 ...
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Arbitration
Claim form - Service - Service out of the jurisdiction Bitumex (HK) Company Ltd v IRPC Public Company Ltd: Queen's Bench Division, Commercial Court (Judge Mackie QC): 2 May 2012 ...