Last 3 months headlines – Page 1335
-
News
Question of truth
I have not read the full survey by the Legal Services Consumer Panel (see [2011] Gazette, 23 June, 3), nor do I know what the actual question was. We do know the answer – the public believe that only 47% of lawyers are trusted to ...
-
News
Paying the penalty
I read the article ‘Lenders vet solicitors on Google and note that lenders are monitoring the time solicitors take to register charges. The delaying factor in almost all cases is the time lenders take to discharge existing charges after receipt of funds from the seller’s ...
-
News
Libraries matter
Martin Barber-Redmore makes some valid points about the possibilities of outsourcing and electronic resources, but misses some fundamental points in his paragraph on traditional legal libraries. Libraries still have a role within law firms, regardless of where they locate themselves or how the office is arranged. ...
-
News
Cold calling
Over recent months, we have received information from clients that they have been contacted by companies via their mobile phone, indicating that they are currently pursuing a claim. The company is offering to settle their claim, typically for £3,750. These existing ...
-
News
Tenancy deposits
Readers of the Gazette will be familiar with tenancy deposits. In a nutshell, parliament sought to establish schemes to protect tenants’ deposits (incorporating alternative dispute resolution for resolving disputes) and punish any landlord who failed to comply with his duty to protect the deposit within ...
-
News
Security concerns
I have been appearing in our local magistrates’ court for over 32 years. I have recently had problems with a rather officious security officer. The other day I went to speak to the prosecutor in the Crown Prosecution room. ...
-
News
Act on referral fees
In recent times three core institutions of society have been rocked by crises. In 2007, the banking system came to the brink of collapse. In 2009, parliament was shaken to its foundations when countless members were shown to have falsified expenses. ...
-
News
Most solicitors will support panel’s call for will-writing to be made a reserved activity
Fledgling watchdog the Legal Services Consumer Panel has hitherto manifested a laissez-faire attitude to the post-Legal Services Act market - most notably perhaps by declining the opportunity to call for a ban on referral fees. So its pronouncements today on will-writing go against the grain. ...
-
News
How could activities at News International be treated as something separate from its BSkyB bid?
by Sarah Davis, group commercial legal director at Guardian Media Group Never mind a week; a day is a long time in the politics of media regulation.
-
News
Phone-hacking scandal has obscured other important stories
Last week was not a very good time to be a reporter - although it helped if you had never been employed by one of Rupert Murdoch’s diminishing stable of newspapers. It looks as if journalists, like solicitors, are about to lose the privilege of ...
-
News
The judiciary – still too pale, male and stale?
There was a time, in those unreconstructed days before the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC), when a woman would be turned down for judicial appointment simply because her skirt was deemed too short. Or she looked bookish or spinsterish or headmistressy. Or wore ...
-
News
Practising fee to fall 23%
The Law Society Council today approved a reduction in the individual practising certificate fee for next year of 23%, reflecting the ‘reduced funding requirement’ of the Law Society Group. The individual PC fee will drop from £428 to £328 to reflect the £94.8m net funding ...
-
News
Has the once weak SRA morphed into the Incredible Hulk?
Are we seeing some sort of metamorphosis over at the SRA? This week saw the kind of rhetoric that will put the frighteners on any law firm veering dangerously close to the red. The language used on a report into outstanding premiums ...
-
News
Mid-market firms review strategy ahead of alternative business structures
More than a third of mid-market law firms have changed their business strategies in the last year in response to the Legal Services Act. A survey of 101 firms, commissioned by legal information provider Lexis Nexis, also found that a further quarter will alter their structure ...
-
News
ABS timetable in danger of slipping
The Solicitors Regulation Authority may not be ready to license alternative business structures from the target date of 6 October. SRA chairman Charles Plant told the regulator’s monthly board meeting today that the authority’s preparations for the change remain on schedule. ...
-
News
Professional indemnity choices
Indemnity - like Christmas - comes just once a year, which is a relief in many ways. And like Christmas we face it with good intentions to plan ahead and get everything ready on time. However well prepared we mean to be, somehow time catches ...
-
News
Allen & Overy investigates allegations that it was tricked
Magic circle firm Allen & Overy has said it is ‘looking into’ the allegation made yesterday that it was tricked into handing over details relating to former prime minister Gordon Brown to a conman. An article in today’s Guardian newspaper claims that that lawyers at Allen ...
-
News
IAS blames legal aid cuts for its collapse
The Immigration Advisory Service (IAS) has asked clients not to attempt to visit its offices and has blamed government legal aid cuts for going into administration. IAS, the UK’s largest provider of publicly funded immigration and asylum legal advice, went into administration over the weekend. ...
-
News
European Commission focuses on flaws in the auditing market
Like a glacier, the European Commission is slowly moving to deal with the auditing profession for their controversial role in the economic crisis, and generally in relation to the profession’s structural faults. As I have written before, it is about time that this issue came ...
-
News
NHS lawyers warned government that reforms would escalate its costs
NHS lawyers warned the government before it published its bill on legal aid reform that scrapping legal aid for clinical negligence claims would ‘massively’ escalate NHS legal costs, and leave some seriously injured people unable to bring cases. In its response to the government’s cost-cutting consultation ...