Last 3 months headlines – Page 1328
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News
Education is supporting lawyers to advise professionals
Demand from lawyers for specialist non-legal courses has prompted one of the key providers of legal training to move their short professional development courses from the law school to the business school. BPP is refocusing its classroom courses for lawyers to offer financially based or other ...
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News
Looming legal aid cuts to spark closures
Government plans to cut legal aid rates by at least 10% across the board from October will cause a ‘leap into unprofitability’ for firms, solicitors warned this week. The warning comes as mayor of London Boris Johnson voiced concerns that ‘the majority’ of women who have ...
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News
Santander charges ‘compliance fee’
Santander is to introduce an annual compliance fee for its panel members, in a move that the Law Society has called ‘deeply disappointing’. The lender will also open its panel to new firms in August. In a letter to panel members, the bank outlines its plans to move to a ...
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News
Law firms to survey staff on diversity
Law firms and chambers will have to carry out regular staff surveys to monitor the diversity of their workforce from next year, after the Legal Services Board published statutory guidance on the issue this week. From 2012, the LSB will require regulators including the Solicitors Regulation ...
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Firm loses ‘partner’ employment appeal
A solicitor who was paid through a profit share rather than receiving a salary should not be classified as a partner for employment law purposes, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has ruled. Solicitor Jeremy Briars began working for Solihull firm Williamson & Soden in November 2001. ...
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Ministry of Justice could privatise enforcement work
The Ministry of Justice may seek a private contractor to provide criminal court enforcement services, justice minister Jonathan Djanogly has said. Last week, the Gazette revealed that outstanding fines had risen to £609m in the past 12 months, while enforcement staff numbers had dropped by 57, ...
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Solicitor-advocates fear QASA disadvantage
Solicitor-advocates fear they will be marginalised by the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates, and have suggested that some judges may not take part in the scheme. Advocates looking to gain accreditation at the top-two levels of the four-tiered QASA process will need judicial evaluation as well ...
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IBA updates conduct code
The International Bar Association (IBA) published a new global code of conduct this week, identifying the 10 core ethical principles that should guide legal professionals worldwide. The new code was compiled with the help of practitioners from every continent, including former Law Society president Edward Nally ...
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News
Consumer panel’s Hayter: solicitors 'in denial' over client views
Solicitors are ‘in denial’ about the way they are viewed by clients, the outgoing chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel told the Gazette in a parting shot at the profession this week. Dianne Hayter (pictured) said she regretted that too many lawyers were unwilling to ...
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News
Asbestos victims forum urges reforms veto
Campaigners for sufferers of asbestos-related disease have urged MPs to vote down civil litigation reforms. The Asbestos Victims Support Groups’ Forum said its members’ compensation will be ‘wiped out’ if claimants have to pay legal costs from their damages. Currently, claimants must ...
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Romeo on trial
Romeo found himself in the dock this week as a group of lawyers joined the Shakespeare Schools Festival to perform The Trial of Romeo at Gray’s Inn. The performance began with young actors performing Romeo and Juliet up to the crucial moment of Tybalt’s death, ...
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News
Out of Africa
Queuing in the driving rain at the bus stop outside the Royal Courts of Justice last week, Obiter chanced across a lawyer chum just returned from Johannesburg, where, he said, it had been 20C and sunny every day. The conversation inevitably led to the potential ...
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J-Lo or J-law
Obiter must confess to occasional musings over what might have been if only things had turned out slightly differently. Be honest – who doesn’t?
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News
Gold Bailey
Radio 4 began a new series, Voices from the Old Bailey, highlighting interesting 18th century cases from the historic London court this week. The first of the four-part series focused on ordinary Londoners caught up in riots, including a 1780 backlash against legislation giving greater ...
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Character study
One of the first offices I worked in as a young lawyer were rented on a floor of a Dickensian building which, for the purposes, may be deemed to be within a two-mile radius of the law courts.
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News
News focus: Lord Justice Leveson's large remit
There has been a close focus in the press on the main actors in the judicial inquiry that David Cameron announced into the phone-hacking scandal on 20 July. The abilities of Lord Justice Leveson (pictured) and the panel of experts who will advise him do of course matter. As Joshua ...
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News
EU would have to be reinvented if it ends
These are dark days for the EU. Many have noted that its ability to deal with the eurozone crisis is posing an existential test. If it fails, the whole structure could come tumbling down. Let us suppose that this might happen. Other than my being out of a job, what ...
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News
Is News International ‘fit and proper’ to own law firms?
There seems an extraordinary official silence as to the potential relationship of the scandal of News International with the forthcoming implementation of alternative business structures. News International, if it passed the fitness-to-own test, and indeed until the scandal it surely would have, could own a considerable number of legal firms. ...
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News
Hurting tenants
The recent Benchmarks article by Richard Pates exposes the fact that the Court of Appeal has driven a coach and horses through the tenant deposit scheme inserted into the Housing Act 2004, which protects tenants against the widespread abuse by landlords of the rental deposit system. ...
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News
Lay conspiracy
While solicitors spend millions of hours getting to grips with the new Solicitors Regulation Authority code (only four years after the last major revision) in the runup to October, they might care to look up the composition of the members of the SRA and the Legal Services Board. ...