More companies taking a listing on the UK Stock Market offered shares to their entire workforce last year than ever before, according to Paisner & Co’s annual survey Employee Participation in Flotations. Paisner employment partner David Cohen said that in the 10 years he had been conducting the survey, the proportion of floating companies offering […]
Lawyers should seize the opportunity to provide legal information on the World Wide Web or they will lose out to the competition, legal IT expert Richard Susskind has warned. Susskind, a special adviser to Masons and author of the Future of Law, was speaking at The Lawyer’s ninth annual conference on information systems for the […]
Barristers from the Middle Temple have written to the Environment Secretary John Gummer and local councils to voice opposition to the proposals to build a bridge on the Embankment. The planned Millennium Bridge would cross the Thames supported by twin 130-metre towers located on Victoria Embankment between the Middle Temple Garden and Temple underground station. […]
More than 12,000 lawyers around England and Wales are to be asked to buy shares to fund the establishment of a Solicitors Property Centre likely to be located in Surrey. The 12,700 solicitors who supported John Edge’s campaign on conveyancing fees a year ago will be sent a business plan drawn up by Law Society […]
Client demand is the main motivation behind investment in technology for smaller firms, according to Max Audley, a partner at Hobson Audley Hopkins & Wood. Addressing delegates at the conference, Audley outlined the thinking behind his 14-partner City firm’s investment in technology and cited client influence as a recurring theme. “Client perception and client pressure […]
Fleet Street firm Speechly Bircham is taking over 200-year-old Holborn practice Baileys Shaw & Gillett with the loss of six of Baileys’ 20 partners and several other lawyers and support staff. A further four lawyers and two support staff, who make up Baileys’ business immigration practice, which is led by senior assistant Elspeth Guild, are […]
In the old days, the golden carrot was equity partnership. You were expected to work long hours at slave labour rates on the basis that, one day, you would inherit the practice and a licence to print money. The hard work was worth it – the benefits of partnership far outweighed the burden. The boom […]
GUIDANCE ON DAMAGES The Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis v (1) Thompson (2) Hsu (1997) Summary: Clarifying directions judge should include in summing-up to assist jury as to damages, particularly exemplary, which it is appropriate to award plaintiff who succeeds in action for unlawful conduct towards them by police.
All wars create tragedy, but if ever a court case emphasised the way such tragedies can cross borders, it was the recent one heard by Sir Stephen Brown, president of the High Court Family Division. It involved a four-year-old Bosnian girl who, at nine weeks old, was saved after being dragged from beneath a pile […]
John Gabriel Daniels, 46, admitted 1975 and David John Ferraby, 44, admitted 1979, practising in partnership as Daniels Ferraby & Co, Tewkesbury, each fined £2,500 and ordered to pay £2,029 costs. Allegations substantiated that they failed to keep properly written accounts, wrongly drew client money and used it for the benefit of other clients and […]
The case of Welton v North Cornwall District Council will continue. Victoria and David Welton set up a holiday accommodation business turning a farm house in north Cornwall into a guest house which won a three crowns rating from the West Country Tourist Board. But they were threatened with closure following a visit from an […]
Judgment is pending at the High Court in a case of significance to whisky distillers. Mr Justice Rattee has to decide when drink manufacturers are entitled to legally call their product ‘whisky’. The question has been raised because the Glen Kella distillery on the Isle of Man has been taken to court by the Scotch […]