The Law Society Gazette, 13 May 2004

Lawyers back Lords ruling in Naomi Campbell case

Supermodel Naomi Campbell’s victory in her House of Lords breach of confidence case against the Daily Mirror was broadly welcomed by lawyers this week. Alasdair Pepper, a partner with Peter Carter-Ruck and Partners, said: ‘I think the judgment is good and right because everyone is entitled to the right to privacy.’

Technology failures

Lord Justice Brooke, the judge in charge of modernisation of the Court Service, recently lamented the fact that it had taken 20 years from the first polite request by judges during the First World War for electricity to be installed in their chambers. Regrettably, even in the midst of a global information technology boom, the road to modernisation in the Court Service continues to be as long and arduous as it was in the last century.

9 May 1984

Solicitors’ brochures: new draft guidance

Brochures must be in good taste and not of such a character as may reasonably be regarded as likely to bring the profession into disrepute. While the firm may say that they provide some particular services, no expertise or specialism may be claimed.

Specific charges may not be advertised, nor may there be any reference to fixed or reduced fees.

May 1964

Legal Aid Act 1964

Ever since the legal aid scheme started there has been a good deal of uneasiness about the position of the successful opponents of legally aided litigants.

This raises issues of fundamental importance to the very conception of legal aid, for it would be unthinkable that, in helping one litigant financially, legal aid should ever be the occasion of putting another litigant at a financial disadvantage – particularly where the courts have confirmed the legal merit of his case, or the lack of legal merit in his opponent’s case.

Under the Legal Aid Act 1964, there are provisions which will lay this doubt, at least in principle. It marks yet another step forward in the evolution of legal aid in this country. 

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