Last 3 months headlines – Page 1337
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Bring back Green forms
Those of us of a certain age will remember 'Green' forms. They covered legal advice and meant that virtually anyone could get advice on anything, from any solicitor, if they could not pay for it. You filled in the client’s means on the front and you had something called a ...
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Treat clients as customers or you’re doomed, says Ombudsman
Law firms will not survive if they continue to resist consumer demands for fairer pricing, the Legal Ombudsman has warned. A report published today states that up to a quarter of the 90,000 annual complaints relate to costs, where a client has felt overcharged, confused or been surprised at the ...
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SRA seeks online feedback
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has promised a ‘comprehensive review’ of problems encountered in its first year of online renewals.
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Public procurement jumps onto the agenda
Public procurement is not a topic that rates highly when lawyers meet and chat. However, our members have been pressing us to look at the proposed new directive on public procurement, and so we are hurriedly doing so.
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LSB ponders making immigration advice a reserved activity
Regulators have ‘inadequate understanding’ of the immigration advice market and don’t know if lawyers provide a good service, according to a review by the Legal Services Board (LSB). A discussion paper published by the LSB reveals that the authority is looking at whether immigration advice and ...
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Clarke: ‘We’re taking legal aid away from lawyers’
The government’s legal aid cuts are aimed at lawyers, the justice secretary Kenneth Clarke said today, as he rejected the Law Society’s claims that they will harm access to justice for the disadvantaged. Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Clarke said: ‘We’re not taking legal aid ...
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Opponents score hat-trick on legal aid votes
The government lost all three votes in the Lords last night over proposed amendments to its legal aid bill, making concessions on the evidence needed to prove domestic violence and on powers to bring cases back into the scope of legal aid. In a series of ...
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Interpreting the interpreters’ strike
‘Know your own strength!’ the historian and intellectual E.P. Thompson told the biggest central London demonstration for years, on 25 October 1992. But we’ll never know whether the 150,000 who marched that day did know it, since they were protesting against the Major government’s emasculation of Britain’s coalmining industry.
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Blagging and the DPA - is it time to make offences imprisonable?
Despite it being almost 10 years since the start of Operation Motorman, and the subsequent furore which lead to the closure of the News of the World, it is still not possible for a person found guilty of illegally obtaining and disclosing personal information to be imprisoned for that offence. ...
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Survey shows hundreds of code of conduct breaches
Regulators have discovered hundreds of potential breaches of the new code of conduct during visits to law firms. The Solicitors Regulation Authority says it found a lack of understanding of the code during its survey of 200 firms carried out before the new code’s release in ...
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2012 - the year of insolvency?
Now we have the Legal Services Act on the statute books and the first 100 alternative business structures (ABSs) applied for, what does this mean for the 8,000 or so firms who are facing a challenging future?
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Committal fee cut ‘leaves defendants unrepresented’
Defendants are being left unrepresented in magistrates’ courts following the government’s scrapping of lawyers’ fees for committal proceedings in either-way offences, the Law Society told the High Court this week. Lord Justice Burnton and Mr Justice Treacy heard the Society’s legal challenge to the lawfulness of ...
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Judicial evaluation key to quality assurance, SRA says
The Solicitors Regulation Authority has confirmed that it regards judicial evaluation as a ‘central feature’ of the Quality Assurance Scheme for Advocates. However, chief executive Antony Townsend warned today that quality assurance ‘should not be used as a device to exclude the demonstrably competent simply because their pattern of practice ...
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Court clerk turns to Google to fill interpreting gap
A court has resorted to web translation to communicate with a defendant as the fiasco over the government’s new interpreting regime continues to disrupt hearings.
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Immigration
Asylum seeker - Appeal - Respondent North Korean nationals seeking asylum SP (North Korea) and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department: Court of Appeal, Civil Division (Lord Justices Maurice Kay, McFarlane and Davis): 16 February 2012 ...
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Discrimination
Defendants running hotel - Defendants having strong religious beliefs Hall and another v Bull and another: Court of Appeal, Civil Division (Sir Andrew Morritt, Lord Justice Hooper and Lady Justice Rafferty): 10 February 2012 ...
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Human rights
Right to respect for private and family life - Freedom of expression Spelman (by his litigation friends) v Express Newspapers: Queen's Bench Division (Mr Justice Lindblom): 15 February 2012 The ...
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Data protection
On 25 January, the European Commission presented a proposal to reform the EU’s data protection regime. The proposal consists of a regulation governing private sector use of data that would replace the current Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/46/EC), and a new directive that would further regulate the processing of personal ...