LEADING criminal solicitor Tony Edwards has joined calls for a radical reform of the duty solicitor scheme following complaints from some practitioners that local committees are operating cartels across the country. According to Edwards, who sits on the Law Society’s criminal law committee and is senior partner of TV Edwards & Co, local duty solicitor […]
FRAUD specialist John Wood, a former director of the Serious Fraud Office, is to leave Denton Hall to join US rivals Morgan Lewis & Bockius. Wood is the second high-profile member of the firm’s specialist fraud unit to join Morgan Lewis recently, and will take up the part-time post of senior counsel. He will join […]
Leeds firm Walker Morris is sponsoring an exhibition of the works of Turner. The exhibition is showing at Harewood House, near Leeds, until 8 June, and more than 50 works are on display. “The cutbacks we have seen from central and local government for the arts and education are going to continue for the foreseeable […]
Stephenson Harwood employment partner Karen Seward is leaving to build a London employment practice at Pinsent Curtis. Seward, at Stephensons since September 1994 and made up to partner in November last year, was number two in the firm’s employment department and is currently negotiating her leaving date. Pinsents’ London managing partner Graeme Brister said: “I […]
Blue chip merchant bank Schroders is losing its group legal director James Watkins to major Hong Kong company Jardine Matheson. Watkins will join Jardines as group legal director in Hong Kong next month. He was a senior partner in charge of Linklaters & Paines’ Hong Kong office from 1986 to 1994 and joined Schroders last […]
Dibb Lupton Alsop’s Manchester IT solicitor Andrew Smith has been poached by Masons in Manchester along with his assistant Peter Budd. Smith, who was approached by headhunters for the job, was due to be made a partner at Dibbs next month and will become Masons seventh Manchester partner. He started his legal career in London […]
The Law Society has created a new post with the appointment of John Miller as director of membership services. Miller, who is a former marketing and business development director for Westminster Health Care, begins work at the end of April. Although the post is new, Miller’s ambit will include a large part of the work […]
The largest commercial law firm in Croydon – six-partner Stonehams – has taken over three-partner Croydon firm Peard Webster Pringle & John, which specialises in insolvency, personal injury and family law. Stonehams managing partner Russell Bell said: “The insolvency and personal injury work supplements the work we already do, and the family work will be […]
The Union of European Lawyers is holding its eleventh Congress in Palma de Mallorca, under the title of “New Aspects of Human Rights in Europe”. The Congress will deal with problems that derive from the application of the Treaty of Schengen, described by immigration experts as “problematic”. The treaty was designed to abolish border controls […]
Pinsent Curtis has created what is believed to be the first partner post specifically responsible for client services. It has hired former Morgan Stanley vice-president and in-house counsel Jenny Parker to take up the post. Parker, currently on holiday in the US, will quit legal practice to fully devote her time to ensuring client services. […]
US firm Sidley & Austin has added to its commercial property practice by taking on Julian Goodman from Simmons & Simmons. Goodman joins as senior associate, having left Simmons’ property secured lending team. He will focus on all areas of commercial property law at Sidley Austin, including property aspects of corporate and banking work. Jane […]
A LEEDS solicitor is single-handedly trying to set up a national register of “deaf aware” lawyers in a bid to combat disadvantage in the system. Jessica Penrose, of Harrison Bundy & Co, is to launch the Deaf Legal Access Group at a conference she is organising in Leeds on 10 June. She claimed that justice […]