Last 3 months headlines – Page 1368
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Society contacts Cable over HSBC as Nationwide culls 'dormant' firms
The Law Society has today written an open letter to solicitors outlining its strategy and guidance for addressing HSBC’s highly controversial decision to introduce a conveyancing panel comprising just 43 firms. President John Wotton has already complained to business secretary Vince Cable, while talks took place on Wednesday this week ...
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Jackson urges caution over contingency fee cap
Lord Justice Jackson yesterday urged caution over setting limits on the percentage of damages that lawyers will be able to take in commercial cases under his reforms. The Court of Appeal judge also acknowledged that his wide-ranging changes to civil justice may not come into force ...
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Pinsent Masons in Anglo-Scottish merger talks
Top 20 London firm Pinsent Masons has confirmed it is in cross-border merger talks with Edinburgh-based McGrigors. If successful, the merger would create a business with a turnover of more than £300m, headquartered in London and with six offices across Asia. In ...
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City solicitor jailed for perverting the course of justice
A former partner of City firm Macfarlanes who claimed he was the victim of a kidnap to avoid being arrested for drink driving was today sentenced to 12 months in prison. Francis Bridgeman, 43, from Wards Lane, Wadhurst, East Sussex, was found guilty of perverting the ...
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Reprieve on special needs is first concession on legal aid bill
The government has made its first tiny concession in the House of Lords debate on proposed legal aid reforms, agreeing to table a ‘technical amendment’ to ensure all special educational needs (SEN) cases remain in scope. But justice minister Lord McNally gave little hope that ...
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Human rights
Prison - Prisoner - Management and treatment of prisoners Grant and another v Ministry of Justice: Queen's Bench Division (Mr Justice Hickinbottom): 19 December 2011 The Queen's Bench Division dismissed ...
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Injunctions
Practice - Pre-trial or post judgment relief - Freezing order Parbulk II AS v PT Humpuss Intermoda Transportasi TBK and other companies: Queen's Bench Division, Commercial Court (Mr Justice Gloster): 30 November 2011 ...
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Injunctions
Practice - Appeal - Permission to appeal Hutcheson (formerly known as WER) v Popdog Ltd (formerly known as REW): Court of Appeal, Civil Division (Lord Neuberger, Lord Justices Etherton and Gross): 19 December 2011 ...
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Injunctions
Practice - Appeal - Permission to appeal Hutcheson (formerly known as WER) v Popdog Ltd (formerly known as REW): Court of Appeal, Civil Division (Lord Neuberger, Lord Justices Etherton and Gross): 19 December 2011 ...
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PIN point a solution
I read with interest the letters from Edward Foster and CJA Cope regarding ‘the point’ of mediation. Cope ‘fails to understand how mediation can resolve a dispute which involves interpretation of [an] agreement’.
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Professional service
Geyve Walker claims to inhabit ‘the hard world of commerce’. When I became a solicitor, like Franklin Sinclair, it was into a profession and not a business that I stumbled. A professional person has a number of motivations, two of which are service and compassion. ...
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In our interests
Franklin Sinclair in the letter ‘Zero Support’ has only himself to blame. There is no purpose in having unprintable feelings or shouting about ‘outrage’ when the solution is in his own hands. The moral is: don’t do work if there is no possibility of payment. You ...
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Doomed to fail
Institutional memory in the Crown Prosecution Service is notoriously short. Many years ago, when I ran a CPS branch, some genius at CPS HQ had the same idea of a paperless office. Two bright young things visited me uttering the dreadful words ‘pilot scheme’. ...
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Dirty laundry
I cannot be the only practising solicitor who finds the various and vastly different money laundering requirements within the financial industry to be utter nonsense. In one particular estate, I am one of three executors. The other two are my senior partner and a long-standing client.
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Hundreds of court posts axed
More than 1,200 posts were cut by HM Courts and Tribunals Service last year, just as it faced an upsurge in workload caused by rising numbers of litigants in person. A response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request by the Gazette discloses that full-time equivalent ...
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Warning over minimum salary move
Junior solicitors have warned of exploitation and reduced access to the profession for the less well-off if regulators decide to ditch the minimum salary for trainees.
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Law Society to launch Advocacy Section
The Law Society will next week launch a dedicated advocacy section to build a ‘community’ of solicitor-advocates to match the level of support barristers receive from the Inns of Court. The Advocacy Section will provide mentoring, training and networking opportunities at circuit and national level, the ...
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Litigants in person could struggle to secure access to justice
The prospect of a huge increase in litigants fighting their cases themselves in the face of legal aid cutbacks has prompted dire warnings from judges, magistrates, practitioners and support groups about the impact this will have on access to justice. They also fear that HM Courts and Tribunals Service’s plans ...