Last 3 months headlines – Page 1359
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Foot in the door
Work experience is now seen as critical to securing a training contract, but with hundreds of students vying for every vacation scheme place and badgering firms of all sizes for work experience, how fair is the competition? In 2009, former Labour minister Alan Milburn’s Fair Access ...
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Time to get along
Obiter approached the APIL president's lunch with the trepidation of Back to the Future's Doc Brown fearing Marty McFly would meet his future self. Surely the universe would implode if the invited guests - including APIL and its nemeses, FOIL and the ABI ...
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Guerrilla lawfare
There can’t be many legal jobs tougher than that of attorney general of Colombia during the 1990s, when the mineral-rich South American country was close to becoming a failed state. Happily, Alfonso Valdivieso Sarmiento (pictured) survived three years of bringing charges against some of the most powerful men in the ...
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Beaver diva
Obiter understands why readers who work in criminal justice might be distracted by the Ministry of Justice’s attempts, to put it kindly, to fillet their livelihoods. But as you occasionally lift your eyes from rejected LSC forms, don’t you wonder what the few ...
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In cod we trust
Fish and chips taste better in Yorkshire, as any native of the county will agree (yes - Ed). Newly merged Skipton and Keighley firm AWB Charlesworth Solicitors has made the delicacy the centrepiece of a regular informal Friday lunchtime get-together with local professional contacts. According to commercial partner Umberto Vietri: ...
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Serve and protect
The article ‘Mixed-up wills have no value in law’ surprised me a great deal. I disagree that there is any need for a change in the legislation. The provisions of section 9 of the Wills Act are specific and rigid, for the very reason that they are intended to protect ...
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News
Serve and protect
The article ‘Mixed-up wills have no value in law’ surprised me a great deal. I disagree that there is any need for a change in the legislation. The provisions of section 9 of the Wills Act are specific and rigid, for the very reason that they are intended to ...
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News
Writing on the wall
My postbox is bombarded every day with offers of seminars from a multitude of providers. Now on offer is a ‘Crash Course on Punctuation & Grammar’. Have standards of entry to our profession dropped to such an all-time low that our solicitors require after-admission training on the use of commas ...
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Renewal rage
I write to advise of my disgust at the way the SRA is handling requests for practice certificate renewals. I received a PC renewal notice. I have written several times by email, fax and DX to the SRA, but with no response. I have tried ringing, but of course the ...
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Could you thrive in the slipstream of big brands?
We’ve yet to see what impact big money brands will have on the legal market but the general consensus seems to be that it won’t be pretty. Legal services sold like cans of beans by giant corporations with no soul or sense of duty and no ...
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Ruling takes foreign lawyers further on passage to India
India’s much-vaunted ‘road map’ for the liberalisation of its £2.6bn legal services market has inched closer to reality following a high court ruling in a case concerning magic circle and international firms. In a ruling yesterday, the Chennai high court gave foreign firms the right to ...
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HSBC accused of blocking panel appeal
The Law Society has accused HSBC and its conveyancing panel manager Countrywide of 'unreasonable' behaviour over membership of the bank's conveyancing panel. According to a statement, the Society had been told by the bank and Countrywide that an appeal process was in place for firms who ...
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ABS revolution in view
Tesco Law was never supposed to be like this. We expected a flood of new entrants to a high street near you, laden with private equity cash and ideas of grandeur, many backed by existing big-name brands. Alternative business structures were going to sweep up the mass market of personal ...
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Ombudsman confirms move into claims management
Plans for the Legal Ombudsman to handle complaints about claims management companies will benefit consumers and the legal profession, according to the chief ombudsman. Proposals to bring complaints about claims management into the scheme’s remit were confirmed at this week’s meeting of the Office for Legal ...
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Do reserved activities harm the UK economy?
This week, from the same people who brought you economic ruin, we have more of the same. As I have said before, deregulation and liberalisation - those twin modern marvels which most agree to have been the motors of our current economic crisis - are still fixed in our rulers’ ...
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DLA’s fixed-price venture chases commercial market
A fixed-price legal services provider today became the first new entrant of the alternative business structure era to enter the commercial market. Riverview Law, backed with funding from global firm DLA Piper, aims to attract every type of client from small and medium-sized businesses to large corporations.
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Litigation changes ‘border on recklessness’, says APIL chief
Rapid change in civil litigation threatens to ‘besiege’ claimant solicitors and their clients, according to the outgoing president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL). David Bott, speaking at the APIL president’s lunch last week, accused the government of ‘recklessness’ in pushing ahead too quickly ...
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ABS aspirant Express announces £3m expansion
Manchester-based personal injury firm Express Solicitors has announced £3m expansion plans and the creation of 40 new jobs in a bid to become an alternative business structure with a £10m turnover within four years. Over the next year, the 12-year-old firm plans to move to a ...