The Law Society Gazette, 20 October 2005

Falconer stuns with green light to MDPs

The government is to ‘drive down costs’ for consumers by encouraging ‘supermarkets, motoring organisations, banks and other companies’ to own law firms, the lord chancellor said at the launch of a white paper on the future of legal services this week.

The plans will also allow lawyers to enter into partnership with accountants, chartered surveyors and other non-legal professionals – a step further than the recommendations in the Clementi review.

18 October 1995

Letters: Free advice

I was amazed to learn from the recent Which? report that the researchers were able to get so much free legal advice over the telephone. Are these lawyers mad? Like cheap conveyancers, they seem intent on driving themselves to financial ruin. Our firm never gives free legal advice over the telephone.  

22 October 1975

The Crossman Diaries Case

The judgment of the Lord Chief Justice in Attorney General v Jonathan Cape and Others is to be welcomed in so far as his lordship refused to grant the perpetual injunction the attorney general had sought restraining the publication of volume 1 of the diaries of the late Richard Crossman, on the ground that the disclosure of discussions in Cabinet would be contrary to the public interest and in breach of the principle of collective Cabinet responsibility.

October 1965

A Glimpse into the Future: report for 1985 of the Law Reform Commissariat

After a deal of hesitation and a strong rearguard action from the Traditionalists, divorce by mutual consent was recognised in 1971 but only if there were no children of the marriage under 16 years of age. This was not satisfactory and a very successful campaign supported by the Committee for Public Relations ended with the Collusive Riots of 1975 when estranged husbands and wives succeeded in co-operating to cause their under-16 children to fill the Serpentine in Hyde Park with the hats of Military Policemen.

October 1915

The Roll of Honour

Dickinson, Ronald Francis Bickersteth, Capt., 10th Batt, King’s Liverpool Regt. (Liverpool Scottish), who was wounded and captured by the Germans at Hooge on the 16th June, died soon after his capture. He was admitted in July 1910 and practised at Liverpool with the firm of Messrs. Hill, Dickinson & Co., of which his father, Mr George Dickinson, was formerly a member.

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