I read your editorial in the 11 March issue with great interest. In it you urge high street lawyers to take “a long, hard look at their practices”. I would respectfully suggest that a good starting point for most high street lawyers might be for them to drastically alter how they communicate with their clients. […]
A north London firm, Hickman Rose, has succeeded in its action to stop the Legal Aid Board’s (LAB) plan to suspend the use of non-solicitor representatives on the City of London duty solicitor scheme. The practice had applied in June 1996 for a judicial review of a decision by the London regional duty solicitor’s committee […]
The Office of Fair Trading has warned solicitors to “cut the jargon” and draft contracts that are fairer to consumers after winning improved mobile phone contracts from seven companies. The director general of fair trading, John Bridgeman, had threatened to take legal action against the seven with what he regarded as unfair mobile phone leasing […]
M Milton Keynes Council has appointed Mark Jones as head of legal and property services. Jones will join the council in April from Barnet Council where he was chief litigation solicitor. Meanwhile Melinda Davies, who is principal solicitor at Welwyn Hatfield Council, has been promoted to head of legal services. Davies, who previously worked at […]
The Liability Partnerships (Jersey) Law has now been registered and is expected to come into force later this year. Despite earlier indications that the Conservative government would not support the early introduction of equivalent legislation in the UK, the registration of the law appears to have prompted the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to […]
The perception that trusts are relevant only to private client practitioners is outdated and fails to take account of the role of trusts in areas such as off-balance-sheet financing, securitisations and many other commercial arrangements. This article seeks to highlight some of the most common commercial uses of charitable trusts, and discuss the issues involved. […]
The Nationwide Independent Solicitors Group (NIS), a network of 19 UK firms, has formed an association with Iurispan, a similar network of Spanish firms. The association will give NIS a point of contact in all the major Spanish locations. Graeme Kirk, senior partner of Bury St Edmunds-based firm Gross & Co and chairman of the […]
The Acquired Rights directive (ARD) was introduced in order to protect employees when corporate restructuring or insolvency led to the transfer of businesses to new employers. Case law then extended its application to a change of service contractors. But when is a business transferred and not simply terminated? The Spijkers case (1986) established that the […]
Ten years on people still talk of the merger that gave birth to Clifford Chance as the archetypal merger. It was, they say, the one big merger that really worked. But Geoffrey Howe, who was elected managing partner of Clifford Chance 18 months after the deal and had to unite the two firms and develop […]
The new Guernsey director general of financial services, Peter Crook, is keen to see the island’s financial sector develop. “We have a committee that monitors proposals put forward and I think that, in a way, the captives industry is a good example,” he says. “It has been a very strong growth area for us in […]
Russians have been warned by the British Russian Law Association to take steps to lose their “Wild West” image in order to reassure overseas business interests that have been discouraged from inward investment. Christopher Davis, head of due diligence at City firm Davis & Co, told 140 delegates at a conference on Inward Direct Investment […]
The power of the judiciary to develop and modify the common or customary law of Guernsey was recently considered by the Guernsey Court of Appeal in a decision that may have wide-reaching implications throughout the Channel Islands. The court has always been able to develop the customary law, and this decision defines the circumstances in […]