A barrister’s lot in the regions is not always a happy one. One practitioner says: “It is a chicken-and-egg situation. Counsel argue that we do not have to go to London to instruct barristers as they have the necessary expertise, but if no-one instructs the local Bar, how do they get sufficient specialist experience to […]
The Asylum and Immigration Act 1996, which came into force on 27 January, is regarded by many as a cynical attempt by the Government to turn employers into immigration officers by placing employers under a statutory duty to check the status of all job applicants. Section 8 of the Act makes it a criminal offence […]
John Malpas and Chris Fogarty report It is widely acknowledged that 1997 will be the make or break year for the Bar Council’s cherished new Pach pupillage clearing house system. Students and chambers alike complain that the first year of Pach was plagued with technical and logistical problems. But although there is widespread recognition that […]
In what could be seen as a vote of no confidence for Coopers & Lybrand’s planned new law firm, the head of Coopers’ employment law unit, Tim Johnson, is leaving to join Arnheim & Co, the firm controlled by Price Waterhouse. Johnson said he did not want to be associated with any negative comments about […]
VETERAN Labour MP Tam Dalyell has tabled a parliamentary question to probe the extent to which lawyers are subjected to surveillance while interviewing defendants in prisons. Dalyell agreed to table the question following an approach by the criminal barrister Jonathan Goldberg QC, head of chambers at Three Temple Gardens, who has discovered that interviews between […]
Patricia Boyle has left Freshfields, where she was a senior associate, to join the Brussels office of SJ Berwin as the “senior EU lawyer”. As a specialist in the areas of telecomms, competition and intellectual property, she will be in charge of continuing the development of the existing Brussells-based telecomms practice. “When the opportunity arose, […]
MORE than 300 pupillages have been left unfilled by the Bar Council’s pupillage clearing house system Pach, leading to fears among students that the scheme has dramatically reduced the number of places that are on offer. The Pach scheme was designed to bring order to the annual pupillage free-for-all, but its failure to allocate 320 […]
A PARIS lawyer has lodged a complaint with the European Commission against the UK and Guernsey over her treatment at the hands of a Guernsey magistrates’ court. Monique Fauchon claims she was wrongfully refused permission to address Guernsey Magistrates’ Court last summer when she was representing a French fisherman who was fined £10,000 for illegally […]
Tunbridge Wells widow Sarah Bellingham, whose roofer husband, Andrew, died after falling through a hole in a roof while working at Swindon, Wiltshire in 1995 is suing her husband’s former employers, Hathaway Roofing, of Bishops Auckland, County Durham. Writ issued by Dallas Brett, Oxford Nykredit Mortgage Bank of Plymouth is suing Colin Knott, Brian Harding […]
Steve Fiamma, head of US firm Jones Day Reavis & Pogue in London, has made good on the promise he made in The Lawyer last week to “hire one or two more partners by the end of the year”. He has recruited Robert Thomson, formerly a litigation partner with Denton Hall. Thomson, a litigation specialist, […]
Secretary general of the Law Society Jane Betts has defended the Law Society’s guidelines on disclosure of information, saying that far from clamping down on disclosure they are designed to facilitate openness. Writing in The Lawyer this week, Betts says the guidelines are “not intended to operate as a barrier” and will “make the secretary […]
Simmons & Simmons is networking its offices in London, Paris, Brussels, New York and Hong Kong, linking over 1,250 employees through a common desktop platform. It is thought to be the first law firm to use an international frame relay service so extensively worldwide. The service, which will interconnect local area networks, is designed to […]