Last 3 months headlines – Page 1364
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City lawyers warn over EU boardroom plans
EU proposals to improve diversity in the boardroom and ensure transparency around a company’s ‘risk appetite’ depart from current UK thinking, City lawyers have warned. A consultation on a framework for EU corporate governance published earlier this month asked whether more non-nationals should be represented on ...
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Advocacy Training Council calls for vulnerable witness support
Criminal and family advocates should be specially trained and certified to handle vulnerable people in court proceedings, the Advocacy Training Council has recommended. In a report published this week, it said evidence suggests that vulnerable witnesses and defendants ‘frequently face almost insurmountable barriers to justice’ and ...
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Firm wins injunction against Solicitors from Hell
A Thames Valley firm has been awarded an interim injunction against the owner of website Solicitors from Hell, which blacklists law firms and lawyers. Gabbitas Robins, and one of the firm’s partners, Stephen Robins, won the injunction last week prohibiting site owner Rick Kordowski from ...
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Shadow justice minister attacks Jackson costs reforms
Shadow justice minister Andy Slaughter (pictured) called on personal injury lawyers to get their clients involved in the fight to amend the government’s proposals on civil litigation costs. Solicitors have until 30 June to respond, and the Labour MP for Hammersmith stressed how difficult it is ...
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News focus: council lawyers face up to government cuts
Local government solicitors at last weekend’s three-day training event in Exeter were in a curiously upbeat mood for a group facing ‘salami-slicing’ cuts of 10% or more to their legal departments’ headcounts.
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On your marks for the LSC
The Legal Services Commission is clearly getting into the spirit of 2012. In recent months bills to the LSC have been returned and the travel time claimed has progressively been reduced. Our office is situated just over 1.5 miles from Bristol County Court. Many fee-earners ...
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Witnesses and directed surveillance
In his letter, Jon Mack may have misunderstood Ibrahim Hasan’s article of 10 March on directed surveillance. The focus of the piece was changes in the law now proposed, namely judicial approval, which is already the subject of the Protection of Freedoms Bill and the ...
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Naked attempt to slash debt
In response to a letter from my MP concerning the proposed legal aid cuts, I received a reply from justice minister Jonathan Djanogly. This stated: ‘The government wants to discourage people from resorting to lawyers whenever they face a problem...’ This ...
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Doctors know how to cure oversupply
I write in response to Gemma Bond’s letter. Considering the struggling economy, legal aid cuts (particularly the Legal Services Commission’s training grant scheme), and concerns in relation to alternative business structures and changes to civil costs, the drop in training contracts is no surprise. ...
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Still time to build on splendid idea of setting up solicitors' building society
I saw the letter from Edwin Lee, reminding us of that splendid idea of setting up a solicitors’ building society. It was a good idea in 1984 and it is still a good idea. The loss of so many building societies ...
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Advertising age discrimination
I read Ivan Sanders’ letter, in which he pointed out the failure of many firms of solicitors to comply with equality legislation, with particular regard to age discrimination. I too have noticed for some time that many advertisements do not comply.
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County courts system failure
The complaints of Graeme Hydari regarding the state of the criminal courts in which he practises are reflected in the state of certain county courts, and in particular the Central London County Court.
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Royal Courts of Justice were 'incompetent'
I noted with interest the Obiteritem reporting the Family Justice Review Panel’s comment that the family justice system is in fact ‘not a system at all’ (see [2011] Gazette, 7 April, 35). Last week, my husband, two-year-old daughter and I were ordered to attend the Royal ...
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Justice rumbles on
Obiter confesses to being a bit of a grouch when the tummy is rumbling, but it seems he is not the only one. This fascinating graph supplied to Obiter by science journalist Ed Yong reveals an interesting relationship between the grant of parole and the ...
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Adding insult to injury
Labour justice minister Andy Slaughter raised a laugh at a predictably bellicose annual conference of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers last week (Lord Justice Jackson’s ears must have been burning, let’s put it that way).
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You say ‘tomato’, I say ‘moneymaker’
In these straitened times for legal aid lawyers, Obiter was impressed to hear of a fresh initiative from David Pickup, eponymous partner at Pickup & Scott. Industry at Pickup’s firm is not in doubt, of course, but he reflects in an email to Obiter that ...
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Government has cocked a deaf ear to the 'claimant lobby'
They did a U-turn on selling off the forests; they called a temporary halt to the root-and-branch restructuring of the National Health Service. Might the coalition be prevailed upon to reappraise its proposals for the reform of civil litigation costs, even at this late stage?
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Solicitors can help CPS get rape retraction prosecutions right
by Keir Starmer, director of public prosecutions A woman makes a rape allegation against a man, and then later retracts it.
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Learning about our brothers and sisters in law
I was in Budapest last week. The Hungarian Presidency of the EU held a conference on e-Justice, and I spoke about the CCBE’s Find-A-Lawyer project. I was on a panel covering the legal professions. On the coach from the hotel to ...