Last 3 months headlines – Page 1323
-
News
News from ABA’s annual meeting in Toronto
I attended the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in Toronto last week. The global economy looked as if it was about to crash, but it was too late to incorporate that into the programme. The organisers did manage to include the previous US crisis into the opening ceremony, since the ...
-
News
Growing problem of child abduction
Almost every other day a child is abducted from England and Wales to a country where they are unprotected by international conventions to ensure their return home. Recently published statistics from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) state that the last 12 months saw a 10% increase from the previous ...
-
News
Lawyers see rise in insolvency and employment work
Law firms have seen a surge in insolvency-related work and employment advice, as tough economic conditions continue to affect clients. Figures from law firm referral service Contact Law showed a significant rise in calls from members of the public and businesses relating to employment and insolvency. ...
-
News
Halliwells partners appoint Irwin Mitchell to fight claims
Fourteen former partners at collapsed law firm Halliwells have appointed national firm Irwin Mitchell to represent them as they fight claims brought by the firm’s administrator. The group comprises individuals who did not transfer to one of the four firms that acquired parts of Halliwells’ business ...
-
News
Is the Legal Services Board expecting a slow start to ABSs?
The Legal Services Board published a research paper last week outlining its ‘latest thinking’ on the impact of alternative business structures. The paper seems to be preparing the ground for a slow start, with bigger developments later on. It predicts that the ...
-
News
Society to set up pro bono riot helpline for victims
The Law Society is to launch a telephone helpline next week which will direct small independent shopkeepers and other victims of the recent riots to pro bono legal advice. The Society will be working in collaboration with participating law firms and pro bono legal advice charity ...
-
News
Solicitors report ‘chaotic scenes’ as rioters processed through court
Defence solicitors and prosecutors have reported scenes of chaos as they worked day and night to represent or prosecute more than 1,000 alleged rioters and looters arrested so far this week. Magistrates’ courts in London and other cities across England have been sitting 24 hours a ...
-
News
Marsh launches PII service targeted at small firms
Insurance broker Marsh has launched a new service targeted at providing professional indemnity insurance (PII) for smaller firms. Marsh said its service would offer two to three-partner firms exclusive access to Liberty Mutual Insurance Europe, while four to 10-partner firms would have exclusive access to XL ...
-
News
Society welcomes amendment to Localism Bill
The government has amended the Localism Bill, following Law Society warnings that a certain provision could have caused uncertainty in the property market. The provision proposed strengthening local authorities’ powers to tackle abuses of the planning system where there had been a breach of planning control ...
-
News
Chartis will not offer new PII business
Insurer Chartis has said that it will not take on any new business in the solicitors’ professional indemnity insurance (PII) market due to the high costs of the Assigned Risks Pool. The insurer said it will concentrate on renewals within its existing book instead. ...
-
News
Law firms setting up stall
The profession seems to keep dreaming up ideas to make its own life a bit more difficult. This week I had to go to a Midlands town and arrived at a shopping precinct next to the station. There were two stalls in the middle of the mall offering legal advice. ...
-
News
OPG calls for more use of non-lawyers to avoid ‘costly legal solutions’
The Office of the Public Guardian is seeking to encourage the use of non-lawyers to act as deputies for those with impaired capacity, so they can avoid ‘costly legal solutions’. In a call for evidence published last week, the OPG is seeking the views of care ...
-
News
Lancashire firm targets deaf clients as staff learn sign language
A Lancashire law firm is set to become the first practice in the country dedicated to providing legal services to the deaf and hard of hearing. Joseph Frasier in Blackburn will next week launch a campaign – Representing Your Right to Be Heard – to help ...
-
News
Targeting a section of the client base is the way forward
It was heartening today to learn of the strategy adopted by Lancashire firm Joseph Frasier, which is setting out to become the first practice specially dedicated to deaf and hard-of-hearing clients. The move to target a particular niche area of the market is precisely what consultants ...
-
News
Cardiff Law School launches GDL conversion course
Cardiff Law School is to add the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) conversion course to its portfolio of legal training courses from September 2012. The law school said that that the GDL scheme, which enables non-law graduates to train for a career in law, has become ...
-
News
Tottenham law firm damaged by fire
The Tottenham offices of London firm EBR Attridge have been damaged by fire during last weekend’s riots. In a statement issued through the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the firm said that despite suffering smoke damage, most files remain intact and are being ‘reassembled’. ...
-
News
Developments on the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights
This story does not have Rebekah Brooks in it, nor details of high-wire acts to save the dollar and the euro. There are no wars or celebrities in sight. In other words, it is perfect summer reading.
-
News
Code of conduct for litigation funders moves closer
The Civil Justice Council is expected to agree a new code of conduct for third-party funders of litigation by the end of the year, to be combined with the launch of a new association of litigation funders. Compliance with the new voluntary code will be monitored ...
-
News
Guildford lawyer launches conveyancing tool
A Guildford solicitor has helped develop a new online tool to streamline conveyancing, enabling the mortgage lenders’ compliance process to be completed in ‘five minutes’. Julian Sampson, a partner at Wright & Wright, created the ‘Jet’ programme with Alan Dring, the former director of online conveyancing ...
-
News
Quality solicitors for all
Having followed the QualitySolicitors debate in the Gazette you may feel we have been in a type of ‘phoney war’ for the past couple of years. Now the battle for the domestic and SME legal services sectors has started with the launch of QS’s Legal Access Points in WHSmiths around ...